


Physical Therapy

by Magfreak



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:36:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 41,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8204822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magfreak/pseuds/Magfreak
Summary: After an accident that nearly kills him, Tom Branson has a long way to go to rebuild himself physically. Physical therapy nurse Sybil Crawley wants to help, but given their history will he let her?





	1. Prologue

**** "Well, Mr. Branson, it looks like your three-week stay with us is at an end. How are you feeling?"

"Like I've been hit by a truck," he responded with a smirk.

The middle-aged woman looked up from her clipboard and peered at him over her glasses, perched at the tip of her nose. "It was a car, wasn't it? Next week, you'll be telling your friends it was a train."

Tom smiled. He liked Nurse James. He might go as far as to say he would miss seeing her everyday, but that didn't change the fact that he was so very happy to finally be leaving the hospital. So eager was he to go, in fact, that he'd gotten up at 6 o'clock this morning even though his official discharge wasn't until seven hours later. That was just as well, since it took him something like 45 minutes to change into his street clothes. He'd been practicing walking on his crutches for two hours when Nurse James walked in to release him.

He'd be back, of course. You don't break your right femur in two places, tear your right ACL, dislocate your left shoulder and suffer a concussion and get away scot free. His body, as Nurse James had told him several times yesterday and today, needed serious physical rehabilitation over several months to recover fully. Still, he'd been lucky. She'd told him that every day he'd been here.

_Luck is a funny thing_ , Tom thought.

"Here are your discharge papers," she said handing him a thick stack. "The ones at the top have your physical therapy schedule for the first month, and your nurse's contact information. You'll meet her when you come in for your first session on Wednesday—Don't be late!—She'll see you through the whole process. A lot of hospitals don't do it that way, but I am a firm believer that continuity is best for patients, especially stubborn ones like you."

"Me?"

"Yes, you! You're the type who will think you have it all figured out in a week's time, that you'll be good as new in a jiffy. But let me warn you Mr. Branson, this is a long process. And it will be very hard and very painful. You've gone through a serious trauma. The sooner you accept that your life will not be what it was when you step out of this hospital, the better it will be."

He sighed deeply and looked out the window. He knew life wouldn't be easy, he'd have his mother's over-protective hovering to contend with, the settlement over the accident. _Yeah, accident._ And the new job he was supposed to start next week.

_Maybe I should just stay._

"You're going to be fine, Mr. Branson." Her words pulled him out of his reverie, and he realized that she was now leaning on the bed next to him, smiling kindly at him. "The upside to being stubborn is that you can use it to your advantage."

"Thank you, Nurse James. I'd probably be dead if it weren't for you."

"Oh, I don't know, my boy. I've a feeling it takes a lot more than that to break you."

He smiled bashfully and looked at his feet.

"Well, who has time to dally!? Look through those papers and let me know if you have any questions. You have someone picking you up, I expect?"

"Yes, my brother. I told him I'd meet him downstairs."

"Very well, I'll have an orderly up here with a wheelchair in a few minutes."

"I don't need a wheelchair! Didn't you see how well I was doing with these when you came in?" he said pointing to the crutches.

"You're going to want to burn them before the day is out, I imagine," she said with a laugh that spoke of experience. "Take the help while you can. In fact, you should make that your motto. Take the help while you can."

"All right, far be it for me to contradict you," he said with a cheeky wink.

"Good man." With that she turned to leave, but his words stopped her at the door.

"Nurse James, is this right? It says here Sybil Crawley will be my nurse."

_It had to be her, right? How many Sybil Crawleys who were physical therapy nurses could there be in London?_

"Of course, it's right!"

"Is there any chance I can have someone else?"

"Why in the world would you want someone else? Nurse Crawley just started with us this week, but she brought wonderful references. I'm sure she's up the challenge."

"It's just that—"

"What kind of shop do you think I'm running here? I make out my nurses' schedules weeks in advance. You'll be with Nurse Crawley and like it."

"But, I, um. . . . I have a bit of history with her. . . . What I mean to say is, I know her."

"Well, of course, you do."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I know you know her."

"How could you possibly know that."

"Because she told me when she requested you as her patient."


	2. The First Session

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sybil and Tom's history will come out slowly in a series of flashbacks that begins in Chapter 3.
> 
> On Sybil's role as "physical therapy nurse": It is a title that is totally made up by me and may not exist in reality. She is what is normally called in the U.S. (where I live) a physical therapy assistant/aide, which is a person who works under a physical therapist and helps patients with exercises and rehab. I'm not sure if the job has a different name in the U.K. but I couldn't really find anything online. I didn't make her an actual physical therapist herself because that job requires several graduate degrees, and I wanted her to be in her early 20s (the age difference between Tom and Sybil is something I always like to keep in my stories). I didn't call her "assistant" or "aide" because I like using the title "Nurse Crawley." As for Tom's rehab, I have done some light research, but I should point out that I know very little about the medical facts behind these injuries. Any liberties I take with his condition and treatment I do so in service to the plot, which is all in good fun anyway. No harm/offense intended.
> 
> Lastly, Nurse James being around for Tom during his hospital stay AND during his rehab, as head nurse in the orthopedics ward and the physical therapy department is also totally unrealistic, but I wanted to have her around from start to finish. Creative license!

 

 

Claire Branson meant well. Tom knew this. Still, any thirty-year-old man's patience would wear slightly thin if forced to contend with a mother who'd crossed the Irish Sea to help him for a few weeks after a long stay at the hospital—and who kept reminding him of this fact. All Tom longed for was for life to regain a measure of normality. And he and Claire didn't always see eye-to-eye on normal.

So when Wednesday rolled around and it was time for his first physical therapy session, Tom was all too happy to leave the flat and get an afternoon's reprieve. But once his brother Kieran—who gloated to his younger brother about getting to enjoy Claire's cooking without the burden of her omnipresence—dropped Tom off at the hospital three days after he'd been discharged, Tom remembered once again with what and with whom he had to contend and suddenly he wasn't sure whether he wanted to go in.

Sybil Crawley had requested him as her patient.

The girl he'd spent weeks driving around, in silent but ardent admiration. The girl who's very existence was a reminder of everything he didn't have and couldn't have. He'd asked for someone else, not because he didn't want an opportunity to be around her, but because it was hard to be so close to someone so fantastically perfect and know that she was still beyond his reach. He had lived through that special kind of torture already and didn't want to do so again. The physical pain of the rehab was going to be hard enough.

But she had requested him.

_What exactly was she playing at?_

Tom had rolled the question over in his mind countless times since Nurse James' revelation, but he couldn't make heads or tails of it. Thinking of Nurse James now, and her admonition that he not be late, he hobbled through the door of the Orthopedics and Physical Therapy Department and ambled over to the front desk to check in.

With nobody at the desk, he yelled out, "Hello?"

No reply.

He tried twice more and was ready to give up, when a petite blond with a slightly upturned nose and pursed lips finally came up from the back. She was reading through a file folder and, without looking up said, "OK! OK! What's the bloody hurry. I'm—"

She stopped short when she looked up and saw Tom. Her mildly annoyed look immediately became a coquettish smile.

"Well, hi there, love." She set down the folder and leaned over the desk, shrugging her shoulders together in an obvious effort to maximize her already ample cleavage. "What can I do you for?"

"Um, I'm here for my first session. I'm Tom Branson."

"Hi, Tom, I'm Edna. Always here to serve you."

She stuck out her hand with her fingers drooping down, as if expecting him to kiss it. He took it awkwardly and shook.

"So, um. Do I need to sign in or anything?"

"Oh, yes." Without taking her eyes off him, she reached for a clipboard to her right and slid it over to him. Tom found her wide-eyed staring a bit disconcerting. He didn't mind when a girl telegraphed her feelings or desires—in fact, he rather liked it. This one, however, wasn't telegraphing so much as she was using a bullhorn. There was also the fact that he preferred brunettes.

_Brunettes, with softly curly hair and blue eyes and . . ._

Edna pulled him out of that dangerous daydream. "Do you know who you're with, love?"

Tom took the clip board and signed himself in. "Nurse Sybil Crawley."

Edna rolled her eyes and said sarcastically, "She's a treat."

Tom couldn't help but smile at this—she _could_ be a handful sometimes and it amused him to know that a short time into this job, she'd already tried someone's patience.

Of course, as soon as he'd smiled, he immediately wished he hadn't. Edna had taken this as a positive sign and ran around the desk. "You know, I'm studying to be a nurse myself. Maybe I could pop by sometime and practice with you." She was moving a little too close for comfort, but he hadn't quite mastered backing up in the crutches and so was more or less stuck as she leaned in.

"MISS BRAITHWAIT!"

_Nurse James to the rescue,_ Tom thought.

Edna rolled her eyes and turned. "Nurse James, I was just helping the new patient here."

"Last time I checked, _helping_ means getting Mr. Branson's file and pointing him in the right direction, not acting like a bloody tart. And what did I say about the length of your skirts?"

Nurse James stared Edna down until the latter was back behind the desk and looking through a file drawer.

"I told you, I don't have any that go past my finger tips."

"Well, I suggest you do some shopping or stick to trousers. _Loose_ trousers."

"Mr. Branson's file isn't here."

Nurse James turned to Tom, "Nurse Crawley must have picked it up for you. I'll walk you to Dr. Clarkson's exam room. You won't see him until Friday."

Tom followed her down the hall and could hear Edna behind him saying, "See you later, love."

He smiled watching Nurse James roll her eyes. "Silly girl. Niece of the chief of orthopedic surgery, I'm afraid. Good enough worker most of the time, but likes to try my patience a little too often."

A minute more of walking and one turn later, Nurse James stopped and turned to one of the doors. "Here we are." She took a few steps away, but looked back when she didn't hear him open the door. "Well, go on, then! She won't bite."

Tom smirked, opened the door and stepped in.

Sybil had been nervously mussing about with the sheet covering the exam table when he came in.

"Miss Craw—I mean, Nurse Crawley."

She turned to the door quickly and dropped the file folder she was holding, bending over to retrieve it. Crouched down, she could see his leg brace below his cargo shorts and the long thin scar, still fresh, on his right knee. She stood slowly.

She was as beautiful as he remembered. What possible chance did the Ednas of the world stand when she made him want her without ever having to try?

"Hi, Tom. I've always told you, you could call me Sybil."

"You know I couldn't before. Now, well . . . now I'm a bit afraid of Nurse James."

Sybil smiled. "She is a stickler for the rules, but I doubt she'd mind. Please."

"OK," he responded quietly.

"I can't tell you how sorry I am that this happened to you."

"It wasn't your fault."

Sybil bit her lip and looked down. "Well, I guess we should get to the official stuff." She motioned for him to sit on the exam table, which he did with minimal trouble. "I'm going to be helping you with your physical therapy for the next nine months. Usually for an ACL tear, getting back to full strength and mobility can be as fast as six months, but with the pins in your femur, we won't be able to put full weight on it right away, which will delay things for the knee. The first month, it's going to be three afternoons a week, with a visit with Dr. Clarkson on Fridays to make sure you're progressing well and to update your exercises. Do you have any questions, so far?"

"Nurse James told me when she discharged me on Sunday that you requested that I be your patient. Why?"

"I thought it might be easier if you went through this with someone you knew." Sybil smiled sheepishly. "And I suppose I wanted to see you again."

"You could have come up to my room when I was still admitted."

"I thought about it several times, actually, but I wasn't really sure what I would say."

Tom raised his eyebrows. "So you thought signing up for a year of rehab with me was a good alternative?"

"You probably know me well enough to know that my brain doesn't always work in logical ways," she said with a small laugh.

He couldn't help but smile. "I guess I do."

"Well, today I'm just doing a diagnostic exam on your knee and shoulder to check your swelling, strength and range of motion. I'll send my notes to Dr. Clarkson and on Friday he'll go over your plan for the rest of the month. OK?"

"Sure."

Sybil took several pages from the file folder and inserted them into a clipboard on the desk on the far side of the room. She came back to him slowly, as if not sure how to approach what she needed to do next.

_You're a professional_ , she thought. _He's just a patient._

"We can start with your shoulder. How long has it been out of the sling?"

"A week."

"Have you felt any pain?"

"Not too much."

"OK. Raise your arm straight out in front of you, with the palm of your hand facing down."

He did, wincing a bit.

"If you feel any pain now, let me know, and rate it on a scale from one to ten, with one being very slight pain and ten being very extreme."

"Three, I suppose."

She made a note. "Now move your arm to the side."

"Still three."

"Turn your palm to face forward, bend the arm at the elbow and rotate forward."

"Ugh. Five."

"Set your arm down and try to roll your shoulder."

Tom tried, but he found he couldn't move it much. "Doesn't hurt much, but doesn't really want to move."

"OK. Arm out in front again." Then, she put the clipboard down next to where he was sitting on the exam table, took his extended hand and put it on her shoulder. He immediately took it away, as if touching her had burned him.

Sybil rubbed her forehead with her fingers and sighed.

He knew he'd have to touch her over the course of the next few months. There was no getting around it. Still, he couldn't help his reaction. "Sorry."

"No, it's OK. I, um—do you really feel uncomfortable with me as your nurse?" She asked quietly.

The answer, he supposed, was yes. A few days ago, when confronted with the information, he'd sought a reprieve, sure that he wouldn't be able to handle it. Sitting here now, though, looking into her lovely blue eyes and contemplating the possibility of not getting to look into them ever again. Well, he didn't want that either. Yes, it would be torture to be around her, but the sweetest kind.

"No, it's OK. I'm sorry."

"You know, Tom. When I was in school, I was cast as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. I was 15, and I'd never kissed anyone before, so when the boy playing Romeo would come at me to kiss me in rehearsals, I'd step away. One day, he got so exasperated with me that he screamed, 'Sybil, it's my job to kiss you and you have to let me.' "

He said, with raised eyebrows and a teasing smile, "Are you saying you're going to kiss me to do away with the awkwardness?"

She laughed. "I'm saying, it's my job to help you heal and you have to let me."

He smiled sheepishly. "OK, Sybil."

She smiled, happy that he'd finally called her by her first name. She took his hand again and set it on her shoulder. "Now press down on my shoulder as hard as you can."

He could barely manage to push down at all. "I guess there's room for improvement there," he said with a laugh.

She smiled again, took his hand from her shoulder and held it a fraction of a second longer than was professionally appropriate. She _had_ wanted to kiss him just then. What she didn't know was that he had asked the question secretly hoping she would.


	3. The First Day on the Job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes the first flashback (in italics) and essentially reveals how Tom ended up in the hospital. 
> 
> Also, Michael Gregson makes an appearance here primarily because I needed a journalist/editor and my Achilles' heel as a writer is coming up with character names.

 

**Eight weeks earlier**

_Columnist for online political journal._

_No matter how many times Tom thought about his new job—and he'd done so countless times since he'd received the official offer—it still didn't seem true._

_He'd been toiling away at one of London's less heralded dailies as a general assignment reporter for the last six years and had started to lose the enthusiasm for journalism he'd felt at university back in Dublin. The job paid so little and life in the city cost so much that the "experience" everyone insisted would serve him well in the future was starting to seem less and less worth it. And with newspapers downsizing everywhere, he'd even started to wonder whether his career choice might have been the very worst idea he'd ever had. Whenever such thoughts seeped into his thinking, the words of his mother would ring in his ears._

_"Why couldn't you have just been a mechanic like your brother," she would say. "All that money for schooling for a job that can barely pay the bills. Kieran's doing just fine fixing cars and driving people about, and he doesn't have to worry because people will always need cars."_

_No more._

_An old university professor had sent Tom the contact information of a former colleague who was looking for writers for a website he'd launched with a guy who'd worked as Tony Blair's head of communications. It was an incredible opportunity to be a part of something that was bound to get noticed in political circles—and to be there at the beginning. Tom submitted his CV without expecting to hear back, but hear back he did. And after three interviews, he was in. He'd make more money. He'd finally be writing about things that mattered. He'd finally be doing something that could promote positive change. And there was the matter of his title. Columnist. Columnist for an online political journal. It was as close to a dream job as he'd ever gotten._

_The catch was that because the position was funded by a multi-year foundational grant—the journal was a new start-up, after all—the job wouldn't start for almost three months, when the funding came through. The wait didn't matter to Tom. In fact, so eager was he to escape his current position and re-energize himself before his new job started that he wasted no time in putting in his two weeks notice, sure that he'd find something to keep him occupied in the interim. Those two weeks and his old job behind him, he made a visit to Dublin to see his mother, and there, thanks to her fountain of family gossip, he found just the thing._

_His brother's wife's third pregnancy, it turned out, had developed complications, and the doctor had ordered strict bed rest. Kieran's mother-in-law had come to London from Ireland to help care for her and their other kids for a time, but she couldn't stay indefinitely. That meant Kieran was going to have to start spending more time at home. And that meant time away from his garage and from his side job as a chauffeur to the family of a wealthy London financier. Tom had heard of the guy and his reputation for skirting the law. He didn't much like the fact that Kieran worked for someone like that and doing such menial labor, but given Kieran's growing family, Tom didn't blame him for doing what he could to support them. It wasn't his fault that the working class had the system stacked against it._

_So while Kieran was taking time to help his wife, his manager would take care of the garage, but he needed someone to do the driving or else The Greys would replace him. It wasn't that Kieran enjoyed working as servant to rich snobs, he'd told his younger brother when Tom had returned to London from his visit home and offered to fill in. It was that the rich snobs had money to burn._

_"If they're going to pay someone hand over fist to cart their brat around, it might as well be me," Kieran said with a laugh._

_Tom wasn't crazy about being anyone's chauffer, but he liked the idea of helping his brother. He also figured that in his life as a journalist, the connection might prove useful someday. He and Kieran agreed to split the money, so he'd have a little extra before his new job and new salary kicked in. Plus, the old car nut in him wanted to drive a Rolls Royce._

_"So it's just the son you drive, then?" Tom asked._

_"Him and his parade of women."_

_"A new one each night?"_

_Kieran laughed. "Sometimes several. I'd envy the bastard, except they all look the same. Bleached blond, leggy, fake tits—totally nondescript. None of them so much as look you, either, but I prefer it that way."_

_Tom laughed. "Good help is always invisible."_

_"Drive him to dinner, drive him to the clubs, read in the car for four or five hours, drive him home. Easy money."_

_And for the first few days on the job, it was just as Kieran had described it._

_Larry Grey's only words to Tom were his destinations. He was older than Tom had anticipated, which is to say, he was about Tom's age. Tom couldn't fathom how a man in his thirties could endure doing nothing all day and all night. Sure, Larry had a "job" with his father, but from what Tom could tell it didn't actually require him to work._

_The women were, likewise, predictably plastic._

_At least, that was the case until she showed up._

_Tom wouldn't have gotten a good look at her except that when he opened the door for her after he'd driven Larry to her place to pick her up for dinner their first night together, she turned to Tom, looked him in the eye with a sweet, disarming smile and said, "Thank you."_

_She was definitely not like the others, naturally gorgeous with deep blue eyes and long, brown, softly curly hair that was begging to have fingers tangle themselves in it. No, this girl was definitely not like the others._

_Larry, impatient as ever, said "It's his job, Sybil, you don't have to thank him."_

_"I'm just being nice."_

_Once she was settled into the back seat and they were on their way, Larry said sarcastically, "Typical Crawley, you have to be friends with the little people."_

_Tom peaked into the rearview mirror and caught her rolling her eyes at Larry. She smiled at Tom in the mirror, then turned to the window._

_Sybil Crawley._

_Kieran had said he never envied what Larry had. In the few days he'd been driving him around, Tom hadn't either—until this very moment._

**XXX**

Tom hated having to take a taxi to his new office, but Kieran was unavailable today and neither he nor the London streets were ready for Claire Branson's driving. He knew he'd need to do battle with the Tube on his crutches eventually, but he hadn't reached that level of comfort with them yet. Also, he didn't want to be late. This certainly hadn't been how he'd envisioned his first day months ago when he'd been offered the job, but he wasn't going to waste this opportunity, no matter what state his body was in.

So he hobbled through the nondescript office building and took the elevator up to the top floor. He was greeted by a wide open warehouse-like space, where desks were scattered in a vague order. Makeshift signs hung from the ceiling marked the journal's sections: "The UK and the Irish," "The EU," "The Yanks," "Asia," "Africa" and "Everyone Else." The loud din of activity—phones ringing, people talking over one another, papers being shuffled around—brought a smile to his face. He'd been here for his last interview, but he hadn't really gotten a good decent look at the place. Now, he wasn't here as a wannabe or an interloper anymore. Banged up as he was, he belonged. This was his element—a newsroom.

Tom took a few tentative hops forward on the crutches, toward the back of the massive space, where three glass offices looked out to the whole newsroom on one side and to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in the distance on the other.

Tom spotted editor Michael Gregson in the first of these. Once he was closer, Tom waved through the glass wall. Gregson was on the phone but motioned for Tom to come in.

Gregson hung up as Tom sat down and leaned his crutches on the front of Gregson's desk.

"I have to say, Tom, you look pretty good for someone who got hit by a car," Gregson, ever affable, said with a smile. "I tripped while running the London Marathon last year. I sprained my ankle and scrapped the side of my face on the asphalt, and I have to say I came out looking far worse."

"You should have seen me a month ago."

"Well, we're just glad you're all right. I am anxious to have you start, but you have to tell me how you want to do this. I'm not sure how comfortable you'd be chasing down leads right now."

"I'm in physical therapy, but it's going to be a few months before I'll really be back on my feet, so to speak."

"You know, I've been following another hit and run from a few weeks back. None of the papers reported on it, which was surprising because it was the son of the president of HG Bank. Hit some poor bloke outside of a night club but was never arrested. I don't think anyone tried to find who the guy was that he hit."

Tom's heart sank to his stomach. He thought his face might have turned white, but if it did, Gregson continued without noticing. "Martin Grey is such a bastard, he's been accused of financial malfeasance more times than I can count, but he's evaded every charge. I hate the gossip bullshit that the news has become so I don't want to chase something that's just about a rich ass's kid acting like a rich ass's kid, but I want Martin to have to answer for something."

Tom debated whether he should say anything. He, too, had been surprised that nobody in the press had found him after Larry had hit him with the family car, given the prominent status of the Greys, but he was glad of it. Notoriety of that kind was not what he was after, nor did he want the Greys to think that he was after their money. He didn't ever want to feel like he owed them anything.

After a moment's pause, Gregson looked back at Tom, "Do the police have any idea who hit you?"

Tom scratched his head. Honesty was his only option. He could hide it, of course, but Gregson was a famous, award-winning journalist. If he really wanted to find the truth, he would. And if he did, he'd find Tom, his newest columnist, and label him a liar. No, Tom knew he had to come clean now.

"Michael, may I be honest?"

Gregson looked confused. "About what?"

"When I said I was in a hit and run, I guess I implied I didn't know who hit me. That's not the case."

"Oh?"

"The poor bloke Larry Grey hit with his family's Rolls Royce? Um, that was me."

"WHAT? Bloody hell, Tom. Do you know what this means?" Gregson looked like a little boy on Christmas morning.

Tom sighed. This isn't how he'd wanted things to go. "It means you have your source for a story. Only, as much as I agree with you about men like Martin Grey cheating the system and unfair financial structures that make the rich richer and hurt everyone else, I don't want to be part of any story about the hit and run. I'm happy to share the details with you, if you really want to know them, but it would have to be off the record."

"Tom, you know very well 'off the record' are not words any journalist likes to hear."

"I do, but the thing is. . . . how to say this. . . . I, um—I don't want to owe the Greys anything, and I certainly don't want them or anyone to think that I do. But if I start work here and the first story I'm attached to is about how I'm the guy Larry Grey almost killed and got away with it, that's what everyone will think—that you hired me for the scoop, and that I didn't really earn my place here."

Gregson's face was a mix of concern and what Tom hoped was something like understanding. He went on.

"If you want the story. I don't suppose I can stop you from writing it, but if you do it'll mean that I can't take this job. I hope you understand."

Gregson smiled kindly, "I do." He laughed. "It's a trash story anyway, and certainly not worth wasting a talent recommended to me as highly as George Pratt recommended you."

Tom smiled, thinking of his old uni professor, the one who had steered him to Gregson. "There's no love lost between me and Larry Grey, but if you don't mind my saying, for what it's worth, I don't think you'll find satisfaction in making the son pay for the sins of his father."

"You're probably right about that." Gregson looked at Tom for a long moment. "So about your starting with us, then. What can you do?"

"I can do anything behind a desk, but as a beat reporter I'd likely be rubbish—at least until I can get around on my own again."

"Well, it happens that one of our copy editors just quit and a search to replace her will take some time. It's not exciting work, but you could do it from home while you're still on your crutches—no sense in having you come in if you don't need to. Check stories for grammatical errors and check quotes, facts and sources. Can you handle that?"

"Certainly."

"I'll make sure the desk sends you no more than two days' worth of work per week."

"Why just two? I'm happy to do more."

Gregson leaned forward with a serious look on his face. "The rest of your time, I want you to read every book you can on finance law in the U.K. I want you to know it backwards and forwards. Then, get your hands on every public record and financial filing you can about Martin Grey and HG Bank. Do as much research as you can as long as you're chained to a desk, and send me updates every week. Once your legs are back, we'll chase the bastard until he and his political cronies have nowhere else to run."

Both of the men stood, one a bit more tentatively than the other, and with grins on their faces, they shook hands.

**XXX**

After filling out the necessary paperwork at the journal and after Gregson introduced him to some of his new colleagues, Tom took another taxi to the hospital for the day's physical therapy session.

Mercifully, Edna was away from her desk as he came in, so he proceeded without delay to the exam room, where Sybil checked the swelling in his knee before walking him to one of the exercise rooms to do some light stretches and pull small weights with his shoulder. Usually, the exercise rooms were full of activity, but so late on this Monday afternoon, Sybil and Tom had this one to themselves.

They talked about casual topics while he worked out under her direction, the mood light between them. He loved watching her as she fussed with the machines, and he especially loved how she would curse under her breath if one wasn't working the way she wanted it to. She was, he could easily see, a thoughtful, conscientious nurse. How could he ever have wanted to be in anyone else's care?

Toward the end of the session, she commented, "You dressed up today."

Tom looked down at his button down shirt and khaki pants, the knee brace fastened sloppily over them. His sport coat lay across one of the exercise machines by the door. "Oh, I didn't even think to change coming over here. It was my first day at work."

"Is this the job with the political journal?"

"Yes. You remember that?"

"Of course, I do." She smiled and added quietly, "I remember everything we talked about on our drive to Downton. Don't you?"

"How could I forget? It's not everyday the boss pays you to drive his Ferrari and his girlfriend five hours up to his massive castle."

"It's not _his_ castle—and it's not really a _castle_ anyway. I believe we went over that."

They both laughed remembering his reaction—"Holy Mary, Mother of God!"— as they drove through the gates and up the driveway to Downton Abbey, Sybil's family's estate in the north of England.

They looked at one another for a long moment after their laughter subsided. Sybil broke the tension.

"So, how did it go? Work, I mean."

"Brilliant. I'll be working from home for the first few weeks. At least until I learn to get around a bit better with those blasted things," he said pointing at the crutches leaning against the wall.

"Are you having trouble with them?"

"It's not exactly easy when you can only put weight on one shoulder."

"Well, you shouldn't be putting weight on either shoulder. Your underarms shouldn't rest on the top of the crutches, even when you're just standing."

"What do you mean?"

Sybil walked over to get the crutches from their spot by the door. "Instead of hanging on them, you should be pressing them against your ribs. The tops should be about two inches below your underarms. Use your forearms to keep them in place. Here, try it."

Sybil handed Tom the crutches, then took them back to adjust the handles, so they were at the proper height. She stepped away from him to watch.

"OK, walk toward me."

Tom took a few tentative steps holding the crutches in their proper position now. He was almost to where she stood, when he said, "Hey, this is much be—"

Just as he was getting to her, though, the right crutch slipped out from under him. He would have gone tumbling down had Sybil not reacted quickly and caught him. He looked up and realized their faces were about an inch apart.

Sybil held her breath, afraid that the very air in her would give away how fast her heart was beating right now. How fast it beat whenever he was around her.

Eventually, the pain in his bad knee caused Tom to straighten up and pull away. She continued to hold him until he regained his balance, then bent down to retrieve the crutch he'd dropped.

"Are you all right?" she asked as she handed it to him.

"No worse for the wear. I guess I need a little more practice," he replied with a rueful smile.

"Um, if you wanted, Tom, I could come by your flat some time, to make sure you have things arranged in a way that makes it easiest for you to move about and get to things you need, especially if you're going to be working at home. That way you don't have any setbacks with your rehab."

He narrowed his eyes. What she was saying seemed reasonable, but after the moment they'd just had, it felt a little bit personal too.

"Would Nurse James approve?"

Sybil smiled. "A traditionalist like her would be in full support of me making a house call."

Tom bit his lip, realizing for the first time that his mission with Gregson to investigate Martin Grey would have repercussions in Sybil's life if she was still with Martin Grey's son. Right now, she was Tom's nurse, but could they be friends, real friends? Would that even be possible, given what he was going to be doing? Tom had to know where she and Larry stood. It was, and had always been between them, the elephant in the room.

So he asked quietly, "What about Larry? Would _he_ approve?"

Sybil looked at him strangely. "Why in the world would you ask about him?"

"He's your boyfriend, isn't he? Would he mind if—"

"Tom, I ended things with Larry weeks ago!"

The last words he expected to hear. He was dumbfounded. "Oh." Dare he have hope now?

"Surely, you wouldn't think I'd be with him after . . . after everything that happened."

"I didn't know. I, um. . . I didn't realize."

Sybil moved so she was right in front of him and took one of his hands in both of hers. Looking down, she said quietly, almost in a whisper. "I'm never speaking to him again." When she looked up, she saw a hint of a smile on Tom's lips.

"My mam's in town helping me. Maybe after she leaves next week, you can come by."

She smiled back. "It's a date."


	4. The First Date

 

_Aside from her beauty and kind demeanor, Sybil Crawley turned out to be different from Larry Grey's parade of women in one other important respect. She stuck around. Looking at her, it was easy to see why anyone would want to be in her continued presence, but it still surprised Tom for several reasons._

_Nothing that Larry did in the days before Sybil came around suggested to Tom that he was interested in anything beyond one-night stands, and though Tom was not one to judge a woman who wanted to enjoy herself for one night, Sybil didn't seem the type. In the conversation Tom could easily overhear in the car on their first night out, Sybil—a nurse from Yorkshire who'd just moved to London—seemed entirely too sensible to be moved by Larry's usual shtick. Or his money. It was clear that they knew one another and their respective families, and Tom assumed this meant she was wealthy too, even though she didn't live in a posh neighborhood, she had a real job and she didn't act entitled the way Larry did._

_There was also the fact that she was a bit reserved. Tom might have gone as far as to say she didn't seem all that interested. Certainly, she wasn't throwing herself at Larry, something other women did that Tom got the distinct impression Larry rather enjoyed. Previous women always wanted him to call them back—some, completely forgetting a chauffeur was in the car, literally begged. Larry simply and carelessly dismissed them with a wave of his hand. Sometimes, once they'd gone, he'd laugh at their antics. On those nights, Tom wished he could take Larry home, then go back out and find these women and ask, "Is he really worth putting yourself through that?"_

_With Sybil, Larry was different. That first night, there was no clubbing, only dinner. And at the end of the evening, Larry actually stepped out of the car with her to walk her back to her door—even asking Tom to wait, as he wouldn't be staying._

_So she was back the next night, and the next, and the next. She always greeted Tom with a smile that made him hate Larry just a little more._

_On their fifth date, eager to venture beyond the uppity restaurants Larry kept taking her to, she dared lean forward in the seat and asked Tom what his favorite restaurant was._

_Before Tom could say anything, Larry rolled his eyes and answered for him, "Sybil if all you want is Guinness and a potato pie, we can just turn around and I'll have cook make one for you."_

_Tom almost snorted at the absurdity of Larry's insult, but he felt Sybil stiffen behind him. She whispered, "I'm sorry he said that." Tom peeked behind him and gave her a small smile._

_She leaned back and directed an angry stare out the window. She said tightly to Larry, "We can go wherever you like." Tom proceeded to drive them where Larry had originally instructed. Nobody spoke the rest of the way there._

_Later that night, Sybil, by herself, stepped out of the bar they'd gone to for drinks after dinner. Tom was leaning against the car, which was parked on the curb in front of the bar, but stood quickly as she approached._

_"He's in the loo so he'll be a minute," she said quietly. Tom nodded and moved to open the door for her, but instead of getting in, she said. "I'm sorry again about what he said earlier. He's such a haughty prick."_

_Tom narrowed his eyes a bit, surprised at the harshness of her words. "It's really OK," he said. And, suddenly not really caring whether he kept this temporary job or not, added, "Unless it's a destination, I tend not to listen to what comes out of his mouth."_

_She laughed a full-throated laugh._ Oh, honey from heaven, _he thought. It was not the reaction he was expecting._

_"How wonderful would it be to be able to filter out all the useless things people say and only be able to hear what's really important," she said. "The world would be a quieter place to be sure."_

_"You'd certainly never hear a peep from Parliament," Tom responded._

_She laughed again, throwing her head back. "So very true. The downside would be that nothing on the telly would ever have sound."_

_"Oh, I don't know. A scrap of dialogue from Doctor Who might make it through every once in a while."_

_"And Monty Python. They're silly, but I'm inclined to believe that good comedy is terribly important and must be heard by all." She paused for a moment, and her tone changed slightly. "This is a dangerous wish, though. If we could really only hear talk of important things, I might never hear my own voice again."_

_Tom held her gaze for a moment. "You don't think what you say is important?"_

_"It's hard to be sure. Few of the people around me ever agree with what I think or what I want to do, so I know nothing I say is ever important to_ them _. How am I to know if they're right?"_

_"Example?"_

_Sybil shrugged with a faraway look in her eyes. "Like wanting to have a real job. Like wanting a health system that really makes people well and doesn't just patch them up. Like wishing the girls I went to uni with could earn a bit more but don't because nurses aren't paid well because most of us are women." She stopped short, then looked at him embarrassed. "I'm sorry."_

_"Why? I would say all you just said is very important."_

_She smiled, then put on an air, as if imitating her mother. "A proper young lady keeps her radical opinions to herself."_

_"Now, see, that there would rank so low on my importance filter, I wouldn't have heard it at all."_

_She laughed again, and they looked at one another for a long while, each seeming to size the other up. Tom began to feel nervous, scratched the back of his head and looked over to the door to see if he could spy Larry coming. He was clearly taking his time._

_"What's your name?" She asked._

_He turned back to Sybil. "Tom. Tom Branson."_

_She held out her hand. "Sybil Crawley. Delighted to meet you." They shook, but dropped hands quickly hearing Larry finally coming out of the bar. He was looking at his mobile, as if ending a call, and hadn't seen them. Tom looked over at Sybil again, still holding the door for her. As she got into the car, she met his eyes with a hint of a smile and shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly as if to say, "We got away with one."_

_Once back in the car, glancing into the rearview mirror to back out, Tom saw her looking at him with a spark in her eyes that—no, it wasn't his imagination—hadn't been there all night._

_This wasn't Edwardian England anymore, but Tom was not so naïve as to let himself think that a woman who ran in Larry Grey's social circle would ever consider a guy who, as far as she knew, drove rich people around for a living._

_So as he headed home in the wee hours of the morning, having dropped Sybil off, then Larry, Tom was left with the thought that if he wanted to keep getting to see her he'd have to hope she'd keep seeing Larry. What a horribly selfish thing to have to wish, but there it was._

**XXX**

Twenty minutes ago, Tom discovered the worst thing about using crutches. He couldn't pace. And pace was what he did when he was nervous. And now that he was here, alone in his flat, waiting for Sybil to show up, he was very nervous.

They had arranged their "date" yesterday, after his weekly meeting with Dr. Clarkson, who was happy with Tom's progress, three full weeks into his rehab.

His shoulder was healing well. He still felt some pain when moving it, but he was almost back to full range of motion, if not yet full strength. The knee was a bit slower going on account of his not being about to put his full weight on his leg. But he could at least bend the knee ever so slowly to 90 degrees. The lowlight of the week at had been Sybil's discovery, when helping him do this, that he was ticklish behind his knee. He couldn't stop himself yelping every time she put his hand there to support his leg as he tried to bend it. She was, of course, too professional to do anything about the knowledge just then, but the smirk on her face suggested it was information she was storing away for later.

Thinking about it now just made him more nervous—and frustrated that he had no method of expelling his nervous energy. Unable to sit still any longer, he pulled himself off the couch to get a beer from the fridge. He couldn't pace, but he could still drink.

As he stood, he looked over to his bedroom a bit wistfully, then laughed at himself. There would be no venturing in there tonight. He could see that Sybil was attracted to him. But what could be possible between them, physically, with his body in the state that it was in? He felt a bit like a little kid who'd been craving a delicious sundae, only when he finally got it, he couldn't have it because his spoon was broken.

He'd finally made it to the kitchen, when there was a knock at his door. He smiled. She was here.

He hobbled back through the living room to the door, and opened it. A ball of panic rose from his stomach up to his throat.

It was Edna.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"I told you I'd be coming by," she said blithely, as she pushed past him into the flat.

He hobbled quickly behind her. "No, you suggested the possibility. Only, I never agreed. How did you even know where I lived?"

"It's in your file silly! Now, what do you have to drink?" She walked over to the kitchen and opened the fridge.

"Isn't that illegal?"

She looked back at him with a suggestive smile. "I'm not afraid of breaking a few rules."

"Edna, you have to leave."

She closed the fridge again and put her hands on her hips. "I just got here, and I told you I'm here to help." She started walking toward him.

"Edna, I'm serious. I'm expecting company."

He tried backing away as she put her hands on his chest, but of course he wasn't quick enough. "I'm sure they won't mind."

"Tom?"

He and Edna turned to see Sybil standing just inside the door.

_Shit._

Chasing Edna inside, he'd left it wide open behind him. He couldn't deny the incriminating position she'd found him in. Her face, he could easily see, was clouded over with hurt and disappointment.

"Nurse Crawley? What are you doing here? Bit late for a house call don't you think?"

"Tom, what's going on?" She asked quietly. "I thought, um, we . . ."

Tom brusquely pushed Edna aside. "Sybil, this is not what it looks like. "

"I should go." Sybil turned back to the door abruptly, and Tom tried to follow as quickly as he could. "Sybil, stop." He felt Edna coming up behind him, but kept after Sybil, following her out of the flat and into the hallway. "Sybil, please stop."

"Just let her go!" Edna exclaimed with annoyance. She grabbed Tom's left arm—his injured one—and tried to jerk him to stop. She did it with such force that without thinking, Tom grabbed at his shoulder with his right arm, dropping his crutch and falling into an undignified heap on the floor.

"AAAAHH!" His scream of pain effectively stopped Sybil just before she went into the elevator.

She ran over to where he'd fallen on his left side, pushing Edna, who'd squatted down next him, away in the process. "Get away from him you stupid cow!"

"I'm helping him!" Edna protested.

Kneeling down next to him, Sybil said, "It's perfectly clear from that last display that you are hazardous to his health."

"Oh, please, like you're bloody—"

"LADIES!" Tom pointed to his shoulder. His face red with pain.

Sybil pushed him gently from his side to his back. "Oh, Tom, it's dislocated again."

He sighed, closing his eyes in an effort to keep his anger, never mind his pain, in check. "Brilliant."

"It's going to be OK. I'll push it back into place and we'll go to hospital to make sure nothing tore this time, all right? You're going to be fine."

He nodded, opening his eyes to look as deeply into her eyes as he could. "I didn't invite her over, Sybil. She just came."

Sybil smiled. "I believe you, but forget that while we—"

"I'm still here, you know," Edna mumbled from where she was sitting against the wall.

Sybil looked up at her. "Fine. Make yourself useful and come over here and hold his right shoulder down to keep his back against the floor."

Edna did as Sybil instructed her.

"Tom, this is going to be painful."

"More painful than being hit by a car?"

"Well, we know where your funny bone _doesn't_ reside," she said with a smirk. She got up on her knees to push down on his left shoulder with all of her weight. "Look at me."

He did.

"One, two, three."

"Aaaah."

"There. Can you move it again?"

He rolled it slowly. "Yeah, it works."

"Can you sit up?"

He pushed up slowly with Sybil and Edna's help. Looking at the two women on their side of him, he laughed.

"What a way to spend a Saturday night."

Sybil stood and bent over to help him up. "It's not over I'm afraid. We should take you to the hospital."

"Could this wait to Monday?"

Sybil rolled her eyes at him but smiled. "It _could_. But why bother, when we're having so much fun all of us together."

Tom turned to Edna. "Well, blondie, I don't suppose you brought your car."

**XXX**

"Do you ladies know how many Saturdays I've worked in the last year?"

Sybil and Edna sat silent across from Nurse James, who'd spotted them bringing Tom in and immediately ordered them to her office. He, meanwhile, sat in an exam room awaiting the results of his MRI, a bit sleepy thanks to some pain meds the on-call nurse had given him.

"Two," Nurse James said, answering her own question. She peered over her glasses at the two young women, both looking at their laps.

She took a sip from a small tea cup on her desk and continued. "Today, it happens that my Howard is traveling for work, so I took it upon myself to make sure the girls on the weekend shift this month were doing all right. Now, you might think yourselves a bit unlucky to have found me here. But I believe it an act of divine providence. Here are two young ladies in clear need of guidance, and here I am ready to dispense it."

She set the cup down, folded her hands on her desk and leaned forward. "Shall I start, then?"

Neither Sybil nor Edna made a noise.

"All right. Miss Braithwait, you may believe yourself free from the constraints of the rules here, given your uncle's position, but I'll have you know that if I haven't sacked you yet, it's because I don't consider your crass clothing and ridiculous flirting to be of any real harm to anyone except yourself."

Edna rolled her eyes, but her expression remained contrite.

"You can think whatever you like of me and my rules, but I'll have you know I don't have a problem with a girl having a bit of fun. I have a problem with a young woman who is perfectly capable of supporting herself thinking that she has to throw herself at every breathing male that comes her way in order to find happiness or success. You are serious about being a nurse, aren't you?"

"I am," she responded quietly.

"Well, if I were to report that you took information from confidential patient files, that career would be over before it started and there's nothing you or your blessed uncle could do about it."

Sybil ventured a look to Edna and saw that she was breathing deeply, as if fighting tears. She sat slumped in her chair, her confidence gone.

Nurse James sighed. "But I'm not going to do that just yet."

Edna's head jerked up. "You're not?"

"No. If this is the path you really want to follow, I will help you, but you must stop this silly behavior. And for goodness sake, let Mr. Branson be."

Edna breathed a sigh of release so deep, Sybil couldn't help but smile.

"I'll do whatever needs doing, Nurse James. I swear it. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

This side of Edna startled Sybil. She always carried herself with such confidence, it had never occurred to Sybil to think that confidence might be false. Sybil suddenly felt badly for bickering with Edna so much since basically her first day on the job. She was, however, very glad Nurse James had told Edna to steer clear of Tom.

"Don't thank me. Just do your job without causing me any more headaches."

"Oh, I will. I promise."

"All right, you may go."

Edna didn't need to be told twice and hightailed it out before Nurse James changed her mind. Nurse James laughed watching her go, then got quiet again as her eyes met Sybil's.

"Nurse Crawley."

Sybil smiled tightly.

"When you told me you wanted to work with Mr. Branson, I had my doubts about how things would go."

"You did?"

"Not with regard to your skill, but your feelings."

"My feelings?"

"You spoke very strongly about wanting to treat him, and I suppose I should have seen that as a sign of an emotional attachment and declined your request."

Sybil felt herself blushing.

"That said, I do believe that—excepting tonight's shenanigans—he's progressing well. Dr. Clarkson is happy with your work, and he and I both trust your judgment."

"So I can remain his nurse?"

"You can, but I do want to remind you of our policy against fraternizing with patients. It's not in place for him so much as it is for you."

"What do you mean?"

"It's natural to feel a kinship with the people we are helping. The problem is that when they go home, we have to keep working and those feelings can affect us long after, which is not fair to our other patients. Do you understand?"

Sybil smiled. "I do."

"It's very easy to see that you care for one another. But if the spark's real, my dear, it'll still be there in ten months."

"Ten?"

"At least a week back in a sling, then it's back to square one, I'm afraid," Nurse James said with a sigh. "Want to go break it to him?"

**XXX**

He didn't know how long he'd been asleep when he woke up to the sight of her sitting on the edge of his bed, watching him. His bed was in a reclined position so he could almost see eye-to-eye with her.

"Hi," he said groggily.

"Hi."

"I didn't invite her over."

Sybil laughed. "I told you I believed you."

"You walked out quite quickly."

Sybil looked down at her hands. "Reflex reaction." She paused, the added quietly. "I was jealous."

"You have absolutely no need to be."

"I know."

"OK. Just making sure."

"How is your shoulder feeling?"

"It's been better."

"It means we'll have another month together here."

"There are worse things."

He found her hand next to his and their fingers intertwined.

"I should warn you about one thing, though. We have to abide by Nurse James' number one rule."

"What's that?"

"No kissing."

Tom squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his chin to his chest. Sybil laughed. He looked at her again and said with a sigh, "So you're saying this is going to be the longest year of my life?"

"I'm saying your knee and shoulder are going to heal faster than any human knee and shoulder have ever healed."

He smirked. "And how can you be so sure of that?"

"I'm a pretty good nurse."

"Pretty is right."

Sybil blushed, but held his gaze. Neither moved for a good long while.

They would have to wait for love, but only its physical manifestation. Sitting quietly in that little hospital room, both of them felt that, in every other respect, they were already there.


	5. The Road Trip

 

_It was the end of Tom's third week as Larry's driver, the second as Larry and Sybil's driver, and while getting to see her remained a thrill, seeing them together was becoming increasingly torturous._

_At the very least, they kept the kissing at a minimum in the car. In fact, Tom had only seen them do it twice. Both times it was raining and Sybil had insisted Larry needn't walk her to her door. Both times, the kisses were basically over before they started._

_Despite the many times he warned himself about this line of thought, Tom couldn't shake the idea that Sybil wasn't all that interested in Larry. Which, of course, led him to wonder why she kept coming around. Larry was so surly all the time, his feelings were even more difficult to discern, but Tom figured that for him a girl who was so hands-off might be an interesting sort of novelty._

_She continued to say hello to Tom and talk to him in the spare moments Larry wasn't around, but for Tom it was never enough. He knew it was stupid to even think about her—in a little more than a month's time, he'd be starting his real job, leaving her and Larry Grey far behind—but he couldn't help it. He longed to have a proper conversation with her, to get to know her properly._

_And at the end of that third week, he got his chance._

_The family, he was told by Sally, Mrs. Grey's personal secretary, was going to Yorkshire for the weekend to visit friends. They'd be going up that evening on their private plane._

_"Mr. Larry would like to have his car there when he arrives, so you'll need to drive it up today and take the train back. Shouldn't take more than five hours up and two back on the train. But you'll have the weekend to yourself and won't need to report back until Monday."_

_"Which is Mr. Larry's car?"_

_"The Ferrari." The young woman paused and looked up from her desk with a smirk on her face. "I hope I don't need to tell you this isn't an invitation to have your way with the vehicle."_

_Tom laughed. "I'll be careful with it. I promise."_

_Sally went back to the work in front of her with a knowing smile. Tom turned to leave but she called him back. "Oh, and you'll be taking Miss Crawley."_

_He turned back to her abruptly. "Excuse me?"_

_"It's her family home you'll be driving to, and it seems she doesn't like riding in small planes," Sally said with a roll of her eyes. "I've told her you'll pick her up at 10 o'clock."_

_Tom wasn't sure what to make of what he'd just heard. "Why doesn't she take the train?"_

_Sally, clearly exasperated now, replied, "I don't know, Tom, maybe she's afraid of riding in those, too. With these silly girls he takes out, if it's not one thing it's another."_

Five hours in a car with Sybil, _he thought._ _In trying to keep his composure, he rendered himself immobile._

_Sally looked at him with a puzzled look on her face. "Is there something else?"_

_"No, um. No. Except, there's no back seat in that car."_

_"So she'll ride in front with you! Now, I have much to do today. I presume you remember her address?"_

_Tom nodded._

_"Then be off with you!"_

_He quickly left the small office at the back of the large mansion and walked to the four-car garage. And there was the glorious machine. The Ferrari 458 Spider. Tom knew it was nothing more than a symbol of extreme excess for wealthy men with something to prove. Today, he didn't care. He was going to get to drive it. And for a few hours, at least, he'd get to sit next to her._

_He washed the car, made sure the tank was full and mapped out the route to Downton Abbey, the estate where the Greys would be staying for the weekend._

_Finally, it was time to go pick her up._

_When he pulled up to her building, she was already waiting outside. She was wearing jeans, and an oversized green jumper. Her hair was tied back with a scarf, and a small travel bag sat at her feet._

_Tom stepped out of the car to open her door for her. When he'd done so, though, she crossed her arms and started tapping her foot impatiently._

_He could see behind her sunglasses a playful look in her eye. "What's wrong?"_

_"You expect me to get into this car on such a lovely day with the top_ up? _"_

_He smirked. "I was given specific instructions not to go joyriding."_

_"Well, I'm telling you that I'm not getting in until the top is down. I believe it's your job today to drive me home, and I know you wouldn't want to fall down on your duty, so you're in a bit of a fix, aren't you?" The more she talked the wider her smile became._

_He rolled his eyes, got back into the car, put the top down and got back to his spot behind the door, where he met her stare with a smile. Once the top was fully down, he gestured grandly toward the inside of the car._

_She picked up her bag, and as she stepped in, she put her hand over his on the car door. "Thank you for indulging me."_

_Tom closed the door and whispered to himself as he walked over to the driver's side again, "It's my pleasure."_

**ooo**

_"So how does one decide to become a chauffer?"_

_Her voice had startled him, and he hadn't quite heard over the wind flying over them. "I'm sorry?"_

_She leaned in, and when he turned to hear her face was closer than he expected. She smiled but did not move away. "I asked how you became a chauffer?"_

_"I'm not really a chauffer."_

_"Well, you're driving me in this car. Should I be worried?"_

_He laughed. "No, I mean, this isn't what I usually do. My brother is Mr. Larry's driver, but his wife's pregnant and on bed rest, so I'm filling in for a few weeks."_

_"That's sweet of you."_

_"I'm taking half the salary of a guy with a wife and two a half kids, so not quite."_

_"Well, you can't work for nothing."_

_He ventured a look over at her again._ I could _, he thought._

_"So what do you do when you're not being a good brother?"_

_"I'm a journalist."_

_"Really?! For what publication?"_

_"I'm between jobs at the moment. I was at The Independent for six years until a few weeks ago, but I'm starting at a new online journal in about month. Covering politics mostly."_

_"I read The Indy! I've probably read your work!"_

_"I doubt it. Most of what I did was grunt work, covering crime and things like that. Nothing exciting or of consequence."_

_"But the new job will be better in that regard?"_

_"I hope so."_

_"Me too." She paused, then added after a beat. "But I'll miss you."_

_He looked over at her again. She'd sat back in her seat, but she was still looking at him and smiling._

**ooo**

_"Can I ask about what you do?"_

_"Me?"_

_He took his hand off the wheel and scratched the back of his head. "Sorry, I guess it's not my place."_

_"No, it's OK. I'm a nurse."_

_"I'd picked up that much. What kind of nurse?"_

_"I did post-op care in the orthopedics ward at my hospital in York, but I'm starting as a physical therapy assistant in London in a few weeks."_

_"Why physical therapy?"_

_"You get to work with people one-on-one, and at my new job you get to stay with them from start to finish. It's hard to get that kind of continuity with a patient in a hospital setting."_

_"Why nursing? I would think someone like you wouldn't have to work at all."_

_"What do you mean someone like me?" Her tone sharpened a bit._

_He looked over to her apologetically. "I'm sorry. I just, um . . . well, I had to look up where I'm driving today, and on the map I could see it's a sizeable estate, plus you are friends with Larry Grey, who certainly has more money than he knows what to do with."_

_"Aaaand?" She dragged the word out._

_He looked over, and she was smiling again, clearly just trying to make him squirm._

_"I guess I'm making the assumption that you've got money and don't have to have a job. And nursing isn't exactly posh work so . . ."_

_"You're wondering why I bother."_

_"I suppose, but you don't—"_

_"It's OK. It's a fair question. When I was young my mother was in the hospital for a week with pneumonia, and the nurses there were so nice I went every day to be able to watch them work. When she was finally home, I actually_ missed _them. Since then, it seemed the best thing to do to be useful—helpful to people. My parents have never been too keen on me working what they consider a low-prestige job, but I love it."_

_"So if something's ever wrong with me, you're who I should call?"_

_"Yes."_

**ooo**

_"If you're going to be a political journalist, can I ask whose side you're on?"_

_"Which do you think?"_

_"I'm not sure."_

_"Not sure?" He looked at her with a puzzled look on his face. "Do I look like a Tory to you?"_

_She laughed. "No. I was going to guess Labour, but sometimes people who work for Tories are too—at least that's true of everyone who works for my parents."_

_"I am decidedly lefty. In fact, sometimes Labour angers me more because they don't go far enough my way."_

_"Ugh. I know what you mean."_

_"What? Don't tell me you're on our side?"_

_"Why not? Do_ I _look like a Tory?"_

_He laughed. "Do you really want me to answer?"_

_"I do not look like a Tory!" She said indignant, but with laughter in her voice. "I take great pains to wear clothing that my mother does NOT like for the very purpose of not looking like I vote like her. Granted, mum doesn't vote here because she's American, but you get my meaning."_

_"Well, I'm not saying you don't look very good, but you are more posh than any of the girls I know and that doesn't usually translate to any sort of political interest, let alone on the left."_

_She couldn't help but blush at the compliment. She looked at him, his eyes ever on the road, for a long moment then asked quietly, "How many girls do you know?"_

_He smirked. "Enough."_

_"And I'm—"_

_"Lovelier than all of them, yes."_

_"Lovelier?"_

_"What?"_

_"You said posh before?"_

_Tom sucked in a breath. "Oh."_ Shit _. "Um, I meant—"_

_"You meant posh."_

_"Right."_

_She turned to look out the window to hide the grin forming on her face. "Right."_

**ooo**

_"How long did I sleep?" She asked groggily, sitting up from where she'd slumped over against the door._

_"About half an hour."_

_"I'm sorry."_

_"It's all right. You looked quite peaceful. Except for the snoring."_

_"I do not snore!"_

_"You do and quite loudly considering I could hear it over the engine_ and _the wind."_

_She swatted his arm. "I don't believe you. Besides you shouldn't make fun of someone who decided to forgo the much shorter train ride to keep you company."_

_Tom jerked his head to look at her. "You what?"_

_Sybil was wide-eyed as if she'd surprised herself by the admission. She quickly looked over the window to avoid his gaze. "I mean . . . um . . ." She sighed, as if giving up the pretense, and looked back over at him. "I know it's a long, boring drive. I thought you'd like someone to talk to."_

_He tightened his grip on the steering wheel for a moment, having no other way to release the feeling welling inside him that he was unable—unwilling?—to identify. He couldn't look over to her, to really look at her for as long as he wanted to. Finally, he said quietly, with a small smile, "Thank you." Then, he added, "But now Sally thinks you have a fear of small airplanes."_

_"I do have a fear of small airplanes. Those things are like coffins with wings. And I hate private planes on principle. They're so bloody wasteful and . . . I don't know . . . showy. Martin Grey really can't be bothered to ride a train with the little people. He's such a greedy wanker."_

_"Do they really use the phrase 'little people'—I mean all of them. Obviously, I know Mr. Larry does."_

_"I'm afraid they do. My father hates it. He and Martin don't get on at all. Mostly they keep they peace for our mums."_

_"How long have you known each other?"_

_"Me and Larry? Since we were kids."_

_"How long have your parents known each other?"_

_"Our mums were school mates."_

_"Didn't you say your mum was American?"_

_"She is. Larry's grandfather was the U.K.'s ambassador to the U.N., so they lived in New York for ten years. Mum grew up there, and she and Elizabeth went to school together there. They stayed in touch when Elizabeth came back here, and on a visit here once, she introduced mum to my dad."_

_"Really?"_

_Sybil nodded. "It was long before she'd met Martin. Dad says she was much nicer then—though he'd never say that in front of mum."_

_"I suppose they're thrilled about you two being a couple now."_

_Sybil shrugged noncommittally._

**ooo**

_"Holy Mary, Mother of God!"_

_He'd actually stopped the car in the middle of the driveway to get a good long look at the place. He turned to her as she blushed, embarrassed once again by the sheer size and imposing nature of her childhood home._

_"Tom, It's just a house."_

_"Miss Crawley, this isn't a house. Pardon my language, but it's a fucking palace!"_

_"No, it isn't! And can you please stop calling me Miss Crawley."_

_"OK, it's a castle, then. And I absolutely can't."_

_"Tom!"_

_"If I start calling you by your first name, then I'll do it accidentally around Mr. Larry and he'd not take kindly to that."_

_Sybil rolled her eyes and said with a pout. "Who cares about Mr. Larry?"_

_"So this is where you grew up?" Tom asked changing the subject._

_"Yes, but it's not a castle."_

_He smiled. "My mother used to read me and my brother fairy stories when I was young, and when she showed us the pictures of the castles, this is what they looked like."_

_She laughed. "It's NOT a castle! Now are we going to stay here all day or are you going to drive into the garage."_

_He smiled and put the car back into gear. He drove up the drive way past the front of the house and proceeded to the garage in the back. He pulled the car up to a space adjacent to the garage and shut off the ignition. Their time together was over._

_She sighed. "Well, that was fun."_

_He took the keys out of the ignition and handed them to her. "It was."_

_She played with the keys in her lap, but made no move to get out. "I'll go tell Carson to have someone drive you to the train station."_

_He looked at her for a long moment, as she looked at the keys in her lap. "Can I ask you something that would get me sacked?"_

_She looked over to him with narrowed eyes. "What?"_

_"Why are you with him?"_

_She looked back down at her lap. "What do you mean?"_

_"I just—I don't get the impression that you're particularly happy or interested . . . so I just wonder . . . if you're not, why are you with him."_

_Sybil took a deep breath. "My sisters are both married."_

_"What does that have to do with anything?"_

_"It means mum doesn't have anyone else to focus on but me."_

_"She's pressuring you to get married?"_

_"Not exactly. She's just anxious because I don't really go out much. Or at all, really. I like staying in and reading and I haven't had many boyfriends and I guess she thinks that if I'm not going to go and find someone on my own, then she'll do it for me."_

_"How old are you?"_

_"Twenty-four."_

_"And she's already worried about why you're not married?"_

_"Loony, right?"_

_He laughed softly. "She should talk to my mam—although mam has a bit better argument."_

_"How old are_ you _?"_

_"Thirty-one."_

_"And no girl's managed to snatch you up?"_

_"Not yet."_

_"Why not?"_

_He shrugged. "Right one hasn't come along."_

_After a moment, she said, "Larry's thirty."_

_"I know."_

_"I know he's not very nice to most people, certainly not to those who work for him, but . . . for what it's worth, he's nicer to me than he is to anyone."_

_"I suppose that counts for something."_

_She smiled a bit sadly, and after a long pause finally said, "It's a marriage of convenience."_

_"A what?"_

_"Larry and me. I don't care about him—I mean, I do, I suppose, but I'm not in love. I don't think I'm leading him on because I know that whatever he says, deep down he doesn't really care about me. . . . I'm with him because at least that way I don't have to feel inadequate in the eyes of my mother, for wanting something other than what she wants for me."_

_Tom thought back to his wish of wanting her to stay with Larry so he could see more of her. He suddenly hated himself for it. "You should be honest with her," he said._

_"I doubt she'd understand."_

_"Maybe she won't, but if you tell her the truth you won't risk waking up twenty years from now and realizing you gave up a chance for real happiness just because you didn't want to upset your parents, who, no matter what they say, probably don't want that for you."_

_Sybil looked at Tom with misty eyes. "I'll keep that in mind."_

_"I should get going."_

_"You should." Sybil hesitated for a moment, then leaned over and gave him a small, lingering kiss on the cheek. She pulled back and looked into his bewildered eyes. "Thanks for the ride."_

_With that she stepped out of the car._

**XXX**

Tom and Sybil having more or less admitted they wanted to be together, the first few weeks in the "no kissing, no exceptions" regime were not as difficult as either of them expected. They focused all of their nervous energy and sexual tension on his rehabilitation, and for Tom the resulting physical pain was rather cathartic. It gave him something to focus on so he wouldn't keep wondering how very kissable Sybil's lips looked all the time and how very much he wanted to find out just how kissable they were.

For Sybil, the irony of the situation was laughable. Just months ago, she was pretending to be in a relationship so she didn't have to be in a relationship. Now, she was pretending she didn't want to be in a relationship, so that eventually she could finally be in the only one she'd ever really wanted. On the upside, she couldn't have been more sure that this was what she wanted, and he'd made it clear he'd wanted it too. So once they could be together, there would be no ridiculous awkwardness. The preamble could be skipped. They could just be—whenever he was fully healed, 9 more months or however long it took.

About a month after the "incident with Edna," as they referred to it, Tom's shoulder had healed again, more or less, and he was finally able to put enough weight on his leg to start exercising his knee. He still needed the crutches to walk, but he was able to downgrade from the long, stiff plastic leg brace to a softer one that just covered his knee and upper thigh, which allowed him to bend it slightly.

The day he made the switch, Sybil took him to Hyde Park to mark the occasion and to "stretch his legs," as it were.

As they ambled along the Northwalk, a jogger ran past them.

"So do you think that'll ever be possible for me again?" Tom asked wistfully, with a playful expression on his face.

"I do. You just have to be patient." She smiled at him and added, "In fact, the day that you can out run me will be the day that we will declare you fully healed."

"That's quite metaphorical."

"What?"

"The day I can catch you is the day I get to have you."

She laughed. "I suppose that's right." She reached for his hand, and they stopped as she interlaced her fingers with his. She looked down at his crutches and said, "Right now, our first goal is to be rid of these things."

"Oh, yeah?"

"We can't kiss, but Nurse James hasn't specified anything about holding hands."

He laughed. "I think that would be breaking the spirit of the law."

"No," she said, dropping his hand so he could continue walking. "Just bending ever so slightly."


	6. 'Why are you here?'

 

_On the train ride back to London and all weekend long, Sybil was all Tom could think about. The fact that she'd wanted to make the long drive with him, her admission regarding her lack of feelings for Larry, her choice to "settle" for him to keep her parents at bay and, of course, the small kiss that he swore he could still feel on his cheek._

_He'd told her to break up with Larry. Perhaps not in so many words, but he'd at least implied that she should, that she deserved so much better. He hated the idea of her wasting her life with someone she didn't love, someone who didn't value her, someone who would never understand how to make her truly happy._

_It was only one afternoon, one long meandering conversation, but it was enough for Tom to know that Sybil was everything he wanted. The problem was that for all the certainty he felt, the possibility of actually being with her remained as remote to him as the first day they'd met. What circumstances, after all, could allow for them to be together? She was the girlfriend of his boss—more importantly, his brother's boss. He'd been a bit cavalier about the job in talking with her, but the truth was that he knew Kieran needed the money he made working for the Greys. Tom didn't want to jeopardize that. There was also the fact that while Sybil had admitted she didn't love Larry, she'd also admitted to a fear, perhaps greater than the desire to be happy, of disappointing her parents._

People get married every day to spouses they don't love for lesser reasons than that _, Tom thought._

_And even if she did toss Larry aside, how exactly would her family feel if she dumped her mother's best friend's son for his chauffer? No, Tom wasn't really a chauffer, but once the Crawleys knew how he and Sybil had met, they'd see him as nothing else. No matter how many scenarios he'd tried to draw up in his mind, there was not a one in which they could be happy together. Her parents' opinion clearly mattered to her, and they'd never approve of the likes of him. Plus, he'd end up making trouble for his brother, who had enough on his plate._

_And yet, even with all the arguments against laid out clearly in front of him, Tom couldn't help but sense that she was drawn to him. There was something in her eyes when she looked at him. A palpable chemistry had bubbled up between them on that long car ride. Perhaps, he thought cynically, it was simply what society women did to relieve the boredom they felt having married men they didn't love for whatever reasons women did such things. He didn't think her capable of toying with him in such a way, but he was at his wits' end._

_The few days after the drive to Downton were agony as he went back and forth on what he truly wanted. If she listened to him and cut Larry off, how would it be possible to see her again? If she stayed with Larry, he'd have a few more weeks in her proximity, but it would come at the expense of her true happiness. He'd begun to wonder whether taking on this job for Kieran had been a terribly awful idea, in the way that people who've loved and lost wonder what it's like to never love._

_Following the Greys' weekend away, Sybil didn't turn up all week, and Tom, with a small measure of satisfaction on her behalf, began to believe that she'd broken things off with Larry after all._

_But then Friday night came around._

_Larry stepped into the back seat of the Rolls Royce and barked in his usual manner, "To Sybil's," and that, it seemed, was that._

_When she stepped into the car, she looked over to him and smiled as usual, but there was a sadness behind her eyes. It was as if, now that she had revealed to him her truth, that spark that he was used to seeing couldn't light. As if she was no longer lying just to herself about what she wanted, but to him as well._

_He dropped them off at the restaurant Larry had directed him to once she'd gotten in the car. Halfway to the door, she dropped the clutch she was carrying. Tom turned to watch as she bent over to retrieve it but didn't stand back up right away. Larry reached the door, but instead of proceeding inside without bothering to see if she was behind her, as he normally did, he turned and waited. Tom noticed that Sybil's shoulders slumped slightly. As she stood, she turned back to the car and gave him a disappointed smile, then, finally, she went inside behind Larry._

_It was a curious display. Tom wondered momentarily whether it had been a ruse by Sybil so she could hang behind and say something to him. But he shook that thought out of his head and pulled the car around the corner to park._

_It hadn't been an hour when the sound of the door opening startled Tom, who'd been engrossed in the book he'd brought with him._

_It was Larry. He got in and slammed the door closed._

_"One of the usual places. I don't care which."_

_Tom turned back to face the back seat, a bit puzzled. "Um, aren't we forgetting Miss Crawley."_

_Larry, who was leaning back against the seat and looking up to the roof of the car, said unceremoniously, "Fuck Sybil."_

_Tom felt the hairs on the back of neck stand. He faced the steering wheel again, lest he say something out of turn. He heard Larry sit up behind him._

_"You'd like that wouldn't you?"_

_Tom turned back to Larry. "I'm sorry?"_

_"Sybil. You'd like to shag her, wouldn't you? Give her a bit of a working man's thrill. Save her from the oppression of wealthy living." There was an edge in Larry's voice Tom had never heard before._

_It was all Tom could do to keep his temper. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, sir," he said and faced forward again, afraid that if he continued to look at Larry, his fists would start flying._

_Larry laughed. "I must say, though, that she's rather out of your league. Girls like Sybil like to play games. Act sweet and understanding—democratic—pretend that they need to be rescued from their life ennui. But it's all in good fun. Eventually, she'll get bored with you and move on to the next poor bloke. You think—"_

_"Is there somewhere you'd like to go, sir," Tom said, interrupting forcefully._

_Larry laughed again. "First of the clubs you can think of."_

_"And Miss Crawley?"_

_Larry paused. "She met a friend inside and wanted to stay and talk. She'll meet us out later."_

_Without a word, Tom, still fuming, started the car and took off. For the first few blocks, he wasn't paying attention to where he was going, knowing Larry was paying even less attention. After his anger had subsided a bit, Tom got his bearings back and figured out where they were. Within minutes, Tom had pulled up to one of the clubs he'd taken Larry to before._

_"Go around to the back," Larry said before getting out, not bothering to let Tom get out to open the door._

_Tom did as he was instructed. He wasn't sure what had gotten into Larry, and he couldn't help but wonder about what had really happened to Sybil. Tom could tell that Larry had been trying to bait him with his ridiculous speech, but he didn't know why. It had been the most Larry had ever said to Tom, and while the words were easy enough to ignore—no part of him believed anything Larry had said about Sybil to be true—Tom couldn't help but be disconcerted by Larry's tone._

_He'd been sitting in the parked car for about twenty minutes when he saw Larry again, accompanied by a woman of the type he was accustomed to seeing before Sybil. Before Tom realized what was happening, Larry opened his door and ordered him out. The woman had already climbed into the back._

_"Keys, Branson."_

_"Sir, I don't believe you're in condition to drive."_

_"I don't bloody care what you think. Give me the damn keys."_

_"Sir—"_

_"Oh, for fuck's sake, I'm not going to take the car. I'm going to have a bloody blowjob and I'd rather you not watch."_

_Tom rolled his eyes, stepped out of the car and threw the keys into Larry's chest. Larry laughed and climbed into the back seat. Before he closed the door, he yelled out, "Just walk up a block and come back in ten."_

_Tom started walking and considered continuing on without looking back, but he thought of his brother again. And for Kieran's sake, Tom stayed put, figuring that he owed it to Kieran to at least give him warning that he wouldn't be coming back to the job tomorrow. Because there was no way he'd put himself through having to breathe the same air as Larry Grey for a single minute more than necessary._

_Then Tom thought of Sybil. It was unlikely he'd see her again, so the best he could do as far as she was concerned was hope that she'd eventually see how destructive Larry was and leave him, maybe someday give herself the chance to fight for the life she was meant to live. The more Tom thought about her, though, the more it became clear to him that he needed to move on. Sybil, wherever she ended up, was not going to be in his life. And the sooner he came to terms with that fact the better. It pained him to know he couldn't be a part of her life, but it was for the best._

_He didn't know how long he'd been standing there when he turned back to the car, so he was surprised to see the woman step out and head back into the club. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands for a couple of minutes, preparing himself to face Larry again._

_The streets around him were loud and alive with activity, which is why he didn't hear the car coming. When he dropped his hands and opened his eyes, it was too close for him to dodge it. The last thing he saw was the brightness of the headlights and the vague silhouette of Larry Grey behind the wheel._

**XXX**

Tom was so close to leaving the crutches behind he could taste it. He'd been pushing himself to put more weight on his leg and try to walk with as normal a gait as possible. Sybil was encouraged by how much further and more easily he could bend his knee. But there was still significant pain and a significant limp.

While at the hospital, their interaction remained professional, but since Sybil had expressed a desire to hold hands with him, they'd started spending more time together outside the hospital, cutting what corners they could around the no fraternization decree.

They went on more walks, they talked on the phone just about every night and made constant jokes about "courting" the old fashioned way and expressing desire and love only with looks and slight touches. There was sexual frustration, naturally, but both secretly delighted in the romance of their current situation. At any point, Sybil could have easily gone to Nurse James and asked that Tom be assigned to a different nurse, but she hated the idea of him in anyone else's care. And despite the waiting, Tom felt the same way.

Tom was also starting to find his place in his new job. He was still working at home, but he and Gregson remained in constant contact. Just as they had planned, Tom started reading about banking law, and it fascinated him deeply. The more he learned, the more he realized how little he understood about the how capital and currency worked and how men like Martin Grey took advantage the already deeply bendable laws to their benefit through predatory lending and interest rate manipulation. It excited him to think about what he could do when he could be a full reporter again. Thinking of it, he was forced to remind himself that at some point he'd have to tell Sybil about it. He would eventually, and he knew that she would support him. He'd come to see, in their time together, how similar their views were on equality for women and for all social classes. Still, he wanted to find the right moment, and he didn't want to get ahead of himself. He couldn't really go after Martin Grey before he got his legs back. It was another powerful motivator.

As if wanting Sybil wasn't enough.

On this afternoon, now almost three months since Larry had hit him, he felt he had regained his direction. Life, such as it was, was good.

They were in an exercise room at the hospital. Despite his protests, she'd forced him onto a stationary bicycle and was leaning on the handlebars to watch him while he, slowly but surely, pushed the pedals around and around. He'd made a joke about how it felt to be moving in a way that suggested forward momentum, but that really wasn't taking him anywhere.

"A bit like us," he'd said with a smirk.

"If you think things between us are moving slowly, then you're not inside my head right now," she'd replied with an innocent look on her face.

He narrowed his eyes, playfully. "How much longer is this going to take?"

"You riding this bicycle or your knee healing?"

He sighed. "Everything."

She laughed and went over to pick up his crutches. "Time's up, Bradley Wiggins. Let's go back to the exam room so you can stretch."

Tom hopped off the bicycle, took the crutches and followed her. Sybil held the door open for him and closed it behind her when he'd hobbled through. He sat on the exam table with his bad leg up.

"So what's today's torture?"

She smiled. "We need to keep pushing how far you can bend it. The more movement you have, the sooner we can hold hands—and the sooner you can drive."

She put her hands on his lower calf and started pushing his knee in toward his chest, letting go as he straightened it, then pushing again.

"Isn't it sweet how we're looking forward to holding hands?"

She looked at him from the corner of her eye. "If you're wondering if I find sarcasm attractive, the answer is no."

He laughed, then added after a moment. "I could really drive soon?"

"Yes," she said with a smile. "You could start working at your actual office if you wanted to."

"My editor said I could hold off while I was still on crutches."

"Well, then we could take another drive up north," she said, winking at him.

"Would you believe that I haven't driven since the day this happened?"

Sybil winced slightly. Tom noticed.

"Sybil," he said quietly.

"Yes," she responded, her eyes not quite meeting his.

"Why do you do that?"

She looked up at him with a bit of concern in her eyes. "Why do I do what?"

"Wince or jump or react in some way when I mention what happened to me."

"I don't."

"You do."

She moved her hands from where they were holding his leg and stepped away.

"Sybil?"

Watching her back, he could see something was wrong. He gingerly lifted his leg and limped over to where she was, but she recoiled from his touch.

"Sybil, what's the matter?"

She walked over to the counter and started putting the papers in his file together. "It's almost time for you to go."

"Can you please tell me what's wrong?"

She set her elbows down on the counter and leaned her forehead against her hands. "I should think it would be obvious."

"What would be obvious?" He was more puzzled now than ever.

"What happened—Larry hitting you. It was my fault."

She turned back to face him again, and there were tears pooling in her eyes.

"What!? Sybil, that's—"

"What Larry did, the reason he did it—and we both know he did it on purpose—was me. I'm the reason that you have to go through this. It was my fault."

**XXX**

_Riding with him to Downton had been wonderful and terrible at the same time._

_Halfway through dinner with her family and the Greys, Sybil couldn't shake the thought Tom had put in her head about the consequence of being with Larry: She would never be truly happy. He was right, of course. How could she expect to be happy with him twenty years from now when she could barely stand him now._

_She looked over at her parents, who forced her into so many things she didn't want and criticized her for the things she did want. But however much they enjoyed tormenting her, she could easily see how much they loved one another. It was a stark contrast to how disengaged and aloof Martin and Elizabeth Grey were, but theirs was the track she was on, unless she did something about it. It was a disconcerting realization to have at that moment. Robert and Cora Crawley did want the best for their daughter. They might never agree with her on what "the best" was, but they knew the blessing of a marriage that was full of love and—Tom was right—they wouldn't want anything less for her. Certainly, they couldn't believe she deserved less._

_She needed to end things with Larry. And she knew her parents would understand. They would have to._

_So at the end of the weekend, Sybil declined Larry's invitation to drive back to London with him (which led him to petulantly ask one of the Crawley's staff to drive the car back for him). And, after having spent almost every evening of the last two weeks with him, she avoided him for a full five days._

_On Friday, she couldn't come up with any more excuses. She'd hoped that he'd get bored waiting for her and end things himself, but it was not to be. This was task Sybil needed to do herself._

_As he refused to come over to her tiny flat, she agreed to go out to dinner. Gauche as it was to break up with someone in public, that's how it would have to be. As she waited for him and Tom to come around to fetch her, she couldn't get hold of her nerves, worried to no end not only about what she would say to Larry, but also—and more importantly—about how she'd find a moment to speak to Tom, to thank him, to ask him about when they could see each other again._

_After Tom had dropped them off at the restaurant, she'd tried to hang back to slip him a note she'd written ahead of time and put in her clutch. But, of course, for all the times Larry stormed into any restaurant leaving her ten paces behind, this had to be the one night he'd turn and see her in._

_Once inside, Sybil was grateful that they'd been given a semi-private table in a quiet corner. He complained about being too near the kitchen, which made her roll her eyes._

_They ordered and made small talk about the weekend away and their parents, but once their first course was served Sybil knew she could avoid the topic no longer._

_"Um, Larry, I have something to say."_

_"Don't you always," he said with a snide laugh._

_Sybil took a deep breath. "I don't think things are working between us."_

_"What are you talking about?"_

_"Well, it's been nice enough going out to dinner and things, but we're not really all that compatible, you and I. I'm sure if you stopped to think about it, you'd agree."_

_"Not compatible?! Sybil, our mothers are practically sisters. We're in the same social circle. We've known each other since birth. What else do you want?"_

_"I want us love the same books, the same music and art. I want us to respect each other's politics—and you know that we bloody don't. I want someone who doesn't treat the people around him like they're not real people. I want us to want the same things out of life, and if you think that coming to places like this or drinking the night away at a club is the life I want, then you don't know me at all!"_

_"God, is this about your ridiculous left-wing—"_

_"What I believe is NOT ridiculous. But that's my point! Do you honestly want to keep having this same argument over and over."_

_"Sybil, you're not even twenty-five years old. Everyone tries to save the world when they're young."_

_Sybil huffed. "I don't recall you ever bothering."_

_"That's because I knew better. Eventually, you'll put all this aside, quit your pointless job and we'll get married."_

_Sybil took a deep breath, trying to keep her anger at bay. "First, what I do is not pointless. Second, how can you possibly see marriage in our future when you don't want a wife with a career and I've repeatedly told I've no intention of abandoning my job. Do you really think me so weak as to give in to your every whim."_

_"No, Sybil, I happen to be very well acquainted with how bloody stubborn you are. I just know that you're going to come to your senses eventually."_

_"Larry, I'm finished with this. Whether you choose to hear the words or not—and obviously, you don't bother to listen to anything I say—I don't want to waste any more of my time with you."_

_He laughed. "Because you have so many suitors knocking down your door."_

_"If you think insulting me is going to somehow make me change my mind, you're even stupider than I imagined."_

_Larry sighed, and softened his tone. "I'm sorry, but Sybil, this is silly. Things are fine between us."_

_"No, they aren't! You and I can barely have a conversation without getting into it over politics or you checking out completely and playing with your bloody mobile. Most of the time we spend together, we're eating or drinking in a dull silence. Do you know that on the drive to Downton with Tom, he and I talked for five straight hours. I swear that conversation was nicer, more interesting and more engaging than anything you could ever be capable of with me. And the saddest thing about it all is that you don't even seem to comprehend that you're not happy either."_

_"Tom? You mean the grubby chauffer?"_

_Sybil didn't mean to bring him up, and seeing the anger in Larry's face now, she wished she hadn't. "Ugh. Just forget I said anything. The point is—"_

_"The point is you'd rather go slumming than have a proper relationship—"_

_"You call this a proper relationship?! Ha!"_

_"Well, I have news for you, Sybil. Your joyride with him is over. He works for me, which means you'll have to find another way home."_

_With that, he stood from the table and stormed out._

_Sybil breathed a sigh of relief. It hadn't been pretty but it was over._

Good bloody riddance _, she thought._

**ooo**

_The next morning, with the small hope that the news of her breakup hadn't made it to her yet, Sybil ventured a call to Elizabeth's secretary._

_"Grey family residence."_

_"Hi, Sally, it's Sybil Crawley."_

_"Oh, hello, Miss Crawley. What can I do for you?"_

_"Um, well, you see, I've lost an earring, and I think it might have fallen off in the car. Could you give me Tom's phone number so I can ask him to look for it?"_

_It was a poor excuse, but even if Sally offered only to pass on the message, Sybil hoped he might recognize what Sybil was trying to do and find her of his own accord._

_"Oh dear, have you not heard?"_

_"Heard what?"_

_"I thought you'd have been with them last night, but Mr. Branson was in an accident."_

_"What?"_

_"Apparently, and I'm afraid I don't know all the details, but apparently, he stepped out of the car and left the keys in or something. Mr. Larry had had a bit to drink and, well . . ." Sally paused, then continued in a whisper. "Mr. Larry hit him with the car."_

_Sybil could barely form words. She said quietly, "Thank you, Sally, my apologies," and quickly hung up. She remembered seeing several texts from Larry late last night. She'd ignored them all. She scrolled through them now with a sense of foreboding building in the pit of her stomach. The first three were uninspired insults. The last was a photo._

_It was of Tom. He was lying unconscious, broken on the pavement._

**XXX**

"Sybil, how can you think that?"

"Because it's true, Tom."

"I don't remember much about what happened just before the car hit me, but I certainly don't remember you getting in and driving it in my general direction. In fact, I remember leaving you behind at a restaurant blocks away, so unless you can teleport and never told me, I'm not sure what you're talking about."

She laughed mirthlessly. "Please be serious."

"I _am_ being serious. It's you who can't possibly be serious right now. "

Sybil wiped a tear that had escaped her welling eyes. "You don't know what happened at the restaurant."

"No, I don't, but what could you have said that would have prompted any rational person to do what he did to me?"

"Oh, Tom, don't you see? I broke up with him at the restaurant."

Tom laughed and rolled his eyes. "Sybil—"

"No, listen! We got into a massive row and . . . well, I wish I hadn't now, obviously, but I brought your name up."

"You did?"

Sybil blushed. "I shouldn't have, but I was angry and I was trying to make a point about how poorly he and I got on, and well . . ."

"Sybil that doesn't mean anything."

"But it does! Tom, it angered him. He left after that, and then the next morning, when I'd heard what happened to you, I knew that he'd done it because of me. I didn't fire the bullet, but I loaded the gun!"

She turned away from him, and he could hear her trying to muffle her crying. He was torn between comforting her as he wanted to and abiding by the ridiculous boundaries they'd forced on themselves. There was also a tiny shred of dread building in the back of his mind over her confession.

He finally put a hand on her shoulder and said, "Sybil, please stop crying. This wasn't your fault."

Sybil took a few minutes to calm herself. Finally, she turned back to him. "Look, I understand if you—"

"No, this was not your fault. Larry Grey made the singular decision to get in his family car, start it and drive it toward me."

"But—"

"NO! No, buts. HE did this to me. End of story!"

His tone startled her. But Tom couldn't stop himself. The fear, the dread, in the back of his mind had taken over and was suddenly spilling out.

"Tom, listen—"

"NO! I won't hear you say it was the fault of anyone except that bastard. Honestly, Sybil the more you keep saying that it's your fault, the more it sounds like you're trying to defend him." He turned away from her and limped back toward the exam table for his crutches.

Once there, calmer, he continued. "Do you want to know what I hate about men like him? They don't take responsibility for anything. And why should they? They're surrounded by people who make excuses for them at every turn. They get to go to the best schools, have the best jobs, and if they do anything remotely wrong, it's not _their_ fault because it's the circumstances or something someone else did or something someone else said." He paused as if bracing himself for what he would say next. "It's bad enough that there was a point in your life you believed him worthy of you—not because he truly deserved you, but because the upside-down world you both grew up in made you believe you didn't deserve better."

He turned to look at her again. "You're beautiful and smart and funny and, in all honesty, the best, most amazing person I've ever met, and I want to be with you, Sybil, but not if I have to you convince that you're not the reason he did this to me. I mean, if that's why you're here—to make amends or worse out of pity, well, then . . . you might as well just not bother with me." He picked up his crutches and slowly made his way to the door.

He had his hand on the knob and had just opened the door when Sybil ran across the room and slammed it back shut.

She turned to him and said quietly but strongly, "I'm not trying to make amends, and I don't pity you. That's not why I'm here."

He sighed. "Then why are you here?"

She took a deep breath. Then, she took his face in her hands and brought his lips to hers with a force that startled Tom. After a second, he responded, deepening the kiss, drinking in as much of her as he could. As Sybil snaked her arms around his neck, Tom dropped his crutches, which landed on the floor with a crash, and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her as closely into him as he could. Feeling wobbly in his feet, he pushed her into the wall adjacent to the door. As she hit the wall, Sybil pulled away for a second, took a breath then brought his lips back to hers.

She could feel him smiling against her lips but couldn't bring herself to pull away now that she had him like this. Tom, for everything he had gone through, emotionally and physically, the last few months, standing there now, holding her, kissing her, he felt light as air—as if he had lost all his senses except touch.

Thankfully for them both, Sybil's senses remained sharp. Before Tom realized what was happening, she pulled away abruptly, snuck out from under him and picked up his crutches. As she was pushing them into his chest, none other than Nurse James opened the door.

"Oh, Mr. Branson, you're still here. On your way out?"

Still unable to form words, Tom smiled tightly and nodded.

She turned to Sybil, "Nurse Crawley, if you have a moment, that silly girl is not to be found, and I need to move a filing cabinet. If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate the help."

Sybil motioned for her to lead the way, before turning back to Tom. He felt warm inside at the sight of Sybil's flushed cheeks and the quick rise and fall of her chest, which betrayed the fact that she was still out of breath. Just before she walked through the door and out of his sight, her lips, still full of his kisses, turned into a full grin.


	7. Kieran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my headcanon, Tom comes from a big family, but for the purposes of this story, I decided to change that and make Kieran his only sibling. You'll see why in this chapter.
> 
> I should go ahead and offer a big fat disclaimer regarding the police stuff (and the financial crime stuff that will come up again later). I know very, little about it and while I am doing my best to write an engaging story, the result is probably unrealistic. As always, everything is in service to the S/T plot. All in good fun.

 

_Kieran couldn't remember the last time he'd stayed out this late._

_Liz, his wife, knowing how hard he worked and how little time he had to simply enjoy himself with his friends, made a practice of giving him what they both called a "night off" every few months. It was, truth be told, a reprieve for them both._

_She would send the kids to a friend's house to spend the night and have the house to herself for a long, relaxing bath and a good book. Kieran and the lads who worked for him at the garage would open up several tables in the middle of the shop and drink beer and whiskey and play cards all night long. He'd come home in the wee hours; she, fully rested, would greet him with breakfast and then let him sleep off the hangover while she went to pick up the kids and took them to the cinema for the day. They'd often joke that these precious nights apart were the key to their successful marriage, now going on 15 years—much longer than either of their families had anticipated when they announced they'd eloped at age 21._

_But there had been no nights off since they'd found out they'd be parents for the third time. Being confined to her bed didn't suit Liz, and she saw the toll it took on Kieran, not just for the added effort of taking care of her and the boys at home, but also for the extra work at the garage now that she wasn't there to manage the office. So after Kieran had handed the responsibilities of driving Larry Grey to his younger brother, she offered him a night off, insisting that at six months, there was no reason to expect that the new baby would be likely to make his entrance while he was out. Kieran was only too happy to take her up on the offer._

_But when his mobile rang at 4:25 in the morning, he panicked for his wife's health and their new baby._

_Answering without preamble, he said, "Oh, God, Liz, are you at the hospital already or do I need to come pick you up?"_

_"Kieran, I'm fine, it's not me."_

_"What? But—"_

_"It's Tommy."_

**ooo**

_Sitting in the hospital waiting room for the doctor to update him on what exactly had happened to his younger brother, Kieran couldn't help but think of the time the two of them got the chicken pox when they were boys. He was ten, and Tom was five. Kieran had gotten it first. Their mother warned Kieran often and at length about staying in his room and keeping away from his little brother, so Tom would not catch it also._

_"I'm warning you! It'll be harder on him because he's small, so keep away!"_

_Except that Tommy Branson idolized his big brother—a fact that Kieran was all too keen on exploiting. Laid up in bed sick, he ignored his mother's decree and called Tommy to fetch him snacks or drinks or comics or anything that came to mind. Sure enough, Tommy got sick three days later. And just as Claire Branson had predicted, the virus hit the younger Branson brother doubly hard. His fever reached 105 degrees on his second night sick, and he had to be taken to the hospital in the middle of the night. A remorseful Kieran feigned sleep when his mother came to check in on him just after his father had left with a bundled up Tommy. He spent the rest of the night praying to God that his little brother be OK, promising always to be there for him._

_The memory brought tears to Kieran's eyes._ Tommy has to be OK _, he thought._ He has to.

_Tom had been taken to the hospital with serious injuries, Liz had told Kieran on the phone. That's what the nurse who'd found Tom's emergency contact information had told her. That and the fact that he'd been found an hour ago lying unconscious in an alley._

_Where was Larry Grey? Kieran wanted to ask. Where was the car? Tom was working. Tom wouldn't shirk his responsibilities. He would_ never _do that. He wouldn't get into a fight, either. There was nothing Kieran could think of that would have led to something like this happening. He felt like his head was going to explode with questions. But more than anything he needed to be told that his brother was going to be OK._

_His anxiety must have been written all over his face because those were the first words out of the doctor's mouth, when he finally came over to talk with Kieran._

_"He's going to be fine."_

_The weight that had been on Kieran's heart for the last hour lifted, but the questions about what had happened remained._

_"How did this happen?"_

_"Well, how he came by his injuries we're not sure. The paramedics who picked him up were called by a passerby who found him unconscious; he came to in the ambulance, but he's had a major blow to the head so he was very disoriented and not making much sense. The concussion led to some minor swelling in his brain. We've given him some medication to address that. It should subside in the next twelve to twenty-four hours. The medicine will keep him asleep or groggy for the next few days. Additionally, his left shoulder was dislocated—we've fixed that, but he'll be in a sling for a week or two."_

_The doctor paused to make sure Kieran was taking it all in, then continued, "His right leg is broken in two places, and he's torn a ligament in his right knee. He'll need surgery to repair both. We've immobilized the leg for now and will proceed with the surgery once we know how he wants to proceed with the ligament. There are several options on that score. Do you have any questions?"_

_"Can I see him?"_

_"Yes, though he'll be asleep. I'll have one of the nurses take you to his room. You can make any calls you need to at the nurses' station. "_

_"Thank you."_

_The doctor moved to leave, but then turned back and added, "Our paramedics will have filed a report with police. But unless Mr. Branson himself can tell them something when he wakes up, there's little to go on. You can follow up with them when he is ready. I'd give him at least a few days though."_

_With that, the doctor left._

_A few minutes later, a nurse took Kieran to see his brother. Kieran was glad to see Tom didn't look too much worse for the wear. Other than the brace on his leg, he looked like he might have gotten into a drunken fight and was now sleeping it off. The intensity of the relief was such that Kieran found himself crying for the second time that early morning._

_"I'm sorry I wasn't there, Tommy," he said squeezing his brother's hand._

_The nurse had given him a bag with Tom's personal effects and what was left of the clothes they'd had to tear off of him. Kieran could see that Tom had been wearing the black chauffer's suit. The questions flooded Kieran's mind again, but exhaustion was getting the best of him, so he put the questions aside took his mobile out and quickly typed a message to Liz._

_"He's going to be OK. Staying here until he wakes."_

_Then, he pulled a chair over to the side of the bed and promptly fell asleep._

**ooo**

_Kieran assumed it was a nurse, when he heard a faint woman's voice calling him. He looked up to his brother, still asleep, then turned to find the last person he'd expected to see: Elizabeth Grey._

_Like Kieran, she looked like she hadn't slept all night. And like she'd been crying._

_"Mrs. Grey?"_

_"Hello, Mr. Branson. Is everything all right? Is he going to recover?"_

_"The doctor said he'll need surgery to repair his broken leg, and he'll be a bit out of it for a few days on account of the concussion. He's going to be all right, though."_

_"I'm so glad to hear it," she said, and Kieran could see relief and sincerity in her expression._

_He watched as she walked over to look at Tom. In a maternal gesture, she combed his hair off his forehead with her hand, and said, "Have you called your mother?"_

_"No. I was waiting a few more hours 'til I knew she was up. Didn't want to worry her over nothing now that I know he'll be fine."_

_She smiled. "With mothers, when it comes to our children, it's never nothing."_

_Kieran smiled back. "I'll call her soon." He paused. "Is, um . . . is there something I can do for you, mum?"_

_"I suppose you're wondering why and how it is that I'm here. Could we go somewhere to talk?"_

_Kieran nodded, and the two headed to the hospital dining hall, which had just opened. She bought them each a cup of coffee._

_"First, I must deeply apologize for what's happened, and for what I'm about to say. People in my position—that is to say, people of means and high social status—have the ability by virtue of their money and class to take advantage of others far too easily, and sometimes that ability becomes a tendency, and then an inclination. I didn't realize that the last had become true of my son until today."_

_Kieran furrowed his brow. "I don't follow."_

_"I'm afraid that Larry is the reason Tom is laid up here."_

_"What?"_

_"I don't know all the details, but last night, he was drinking, somehow tricked Tom out of the car and then hit him on his way off. Sally and I have been calling hospitals looking for Tom all morning until we found the right one."_

_Kieran was floored. After a long pause, he said, "Tommy wouldn't have let a drunken man into the car—no matter what he said."_

_"I trust that to be true, but nevertheless, that's what happened. At least, that's as much as I was able to pry out of Larry. He was picked up by police and cited for drunken driving shortly after. As much as I wish now that he'd called me, he called his father, who sent one of his lawyers to pick him up. He'll have to answer for that charge, of course, and . . . well, if you go to the police now with what I've told you—and you would be well within your rights to do so—they would add a hit and run charge as well, I imagine."_

_"I've not talked to the police. The doctor said the paramedics didn't know what had happened and to wait until he woke."_

_Mrs. Grey sighed. "Mr. Branson, I know that this is asking more of you than I deserve—certainly more than my husband or son deserve—but I wonder if you might hold off."_

_"Begging your pardon?"_

_"I know this is an unforgivable thing to ask, but I believe that as the charge stands now, I might convince my husband to allow Larry to take what punishment is meted out to him. But if the charge is increased, and if that charge comes from your brother, Martin will put all the resources he has at hand, which are considerable, to quashing it to Tom's detriment and possibly yours too."_

_Kieran wasn't sure what to say. Was she really asking him to look the other way? It sounded something like a threat, but looking into the middle-aged woman's tired, teary eyes, he couldn't help but see that she wasn't threatening him at all. She was pleading._

_She took another deep breath and continued, "Please don't misunderstand. I don't wish to harm your family. I have realized in the last few hours that the home that I have made is broken, that my husband is not the man I married and that he has corrupted my son beyond recognition, even to his mother." She stopped her to wipe a tear. "Life had afforded me unfair privileges, and I'm taking advantage of them now in an effort to save my son. I promise to give you and your brother any help I can as Tom recovers. If you wish to pursue charges against Larry, I will be as supportive as I can, but it will be very difficult to fight my husband. I hope you understand."_

_Kieran thought silently for a long while. "I, well . . . I can't really say anything until I've talked to Tom. I'll explain what you've said but I must leave it up to him. And I will support whatever he decides."_

_"That's fair enough."_

_"And I'm afraid I may as well give my notice. I still have my wife to look to."_

_Mrs. Grey smiled. "As you should. I do hope that she is doing better. Please call Sally, and she'll be sure to give you everything you're due. Whatever happens, I do appreciate your work for us."_

_With that she stood, no longer as imposing as she had once seemed to Kieran. She turned one more time to him and said, "I truly am sorry about all of this."_

**ooo**

_Later that afternoon, in another part of town, Michael Gregson received an email from a reliable source with the City Police:_

MG Jr. brought in last night. Drink driving. Indentations & blood on grill suggest hit&run. Lawyered up and out. This morning, club security guard called about seeing him and car. Called back, but he clammed up. Club owner likely shut him up to avoid bad ink. Doubt it'll go forward without witness or victim, thought you'd be interested.

**ooo**

_Although Tom woke up several times over the weekend, he'd been disoriented, dazed and his memory of the last few days had been hazy at best. It wasn't until Monday afternoon, just before Kieran left to fetch their mother from the airport, that the sequence of events from the previous Friday night started coming back to him, giving him and Kieran the opportunity to have a proper conversation about it all._

_When they did talk, Tom more or less confirmed to Kieran Mrs. Grey's version of the events. The only detail he added was how Larry managed to get him to leave the driver's seat. Tom didn't mention anything about Sybil, though, or about the conversation that took place in the restaurant parking lot or the suspicion in the back of Tom's mind that Larry had acted on purpose._

_Tom remembered the feeling he'd had just before the car struck him about being done with Larry and, much as it pained him, letting Sybil go. Some part of him might have wanted to fight back at Larry for having done this to him, but at that moment, a greater part—made louder in him by the broken state of his body— just wanted to leave things be, to put it all behind him and pretend it was all just a freak accident and never have to think about the Grey family or anyone in their vicinity again. He wanted to save what fight might be left in him, instead, for his new job, for the life it promised and that had been at his fingertips just before he'd agreed to be Larry's driver. He was still a month away from starting, and he'd have to do so as a diminished version of himself, but he would not let this change anything about his dreams and ambitions as a journalist. Larry could continue plowing through the female population of London for all he cared. He still hoped that Sybil would heed his advice about leaving Larry, but it was no longer his place to have an opinion on her life. Truth was, it had never been._

_So when Kieran told him about Elizabeth Grey's request, Tom went along with what he had to concede was the cowardly way out. He wouldn't agree not to go to the police—though at this point, what evidence would there be except the word of a chauffer against that of one of the wealthiest men in England. He'd just agree to wait and see. And if he never heard from the Greys ever again, was never offered a cent of their money, all the better._

**XXX**

Tom made it back to his flat on the Tube, walking with the aid of his crutches. If someone had asked him, however, he might have said that he floated home, carried by the memory of kissing Sybil and the knowledge that he was head over heels in love. There was no possibility of denying it now, not after having tasted her. He was a fool in love with Sybil Crawley.

He had caught his reflection several times on the ride home and tried to repress the goofy grin that kept forming on his lips, but it truly could not be helped. The thing that he had thought—indeed, _dreamt_ —about for months, long before he considered it possible had happened.

This was the state he was in when he made it to his flat and found his brother there, leaving several containers full of food in the fridge.

"Why, hello, dear brother, what brings you round this fine evening?" Tom asked, a bit too brightly to escape Kieran's notice. He walked into the flat, dropped his crutches and plopped down on the sofa.

Kieran laughed, closing he fridge and bringing two beers out to the living room with him. "What the feck's gotten into you?"

"Am I not allowed to be cheerful?" Tom asked taking the bottle his brother held out.

Kieran sat down in the chair across from him. "You're allowed to be whatever you like, but I wouldn't say you're cheerful. Giddy more like, and if I remember right, the last time you were giddy was when Sioban Kelly kissed you at the back of the church after your confirmation."

Tom rolled his eyes and laughed. "It was my first communion."

Kieran smiled and crossed his arms. "So what's this one's name?"

Tom sighed.

"Oh, just come out with it. If you like her this much, I'm bound to meet her aren't I."

Tom smirked. "Has mam enlisted you in her campaign to get me married?"

"No, but I'll tell her there's a girl, just so she'll pay another visit, if you don't tell me her name."

"Sybil. Her name is Sybil."

"And how'd you meet?"

Tom hesitated. "She's my physical therapy nurse."

It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the complete truth. There was still a lot that Kieran didn't know about how Tom had landed in the hospital and even less about what he was doing with regard to Martin Grey in his work with the journal—a lot that Tom knew he'd have to be open with Kieran about and soon.

"Isn't that against the rules or something?"

Tom laughed and took a pull of his beer. "We're trying to make it work within the circumstances."

"If it's a real thing, Liz will want to meet her. You should come by, she's dying for some company."

"How is she doing?"

"Driving me positively batty. I don't remember her being this crazy for the first two."

"She wasn't in bed for months for the first two. How much longer?"

"Due date is in a couple of weeks, but any day now, really." Kieran took his last drink from his bottle and stood to go. "You've got some stew and potatoes in there."

"Thanks."

"Come by this weekend. Boys'll like to see you."

"I will."

Kieran made his way to the door, but Tom's voice stopped him.

"Have you heard anything from the Greys?"

"What?"

"It's been a few months. I just wondered if you've heard anything from them."

"They sent me the last of my wages, but not since."

"I know they paid you well. If you wanted to go back, you could, you know. I wouldn't mind."

"Are you crazy?"

Tom shrugged.

"Whatever we may have decided to do or not do about what Larry did to you—well, that doesn't mean I have any interest in ever seeing that bastard's face again. Really, Tommy, they couldn't pay me enough."

Tom smiled, comforted by his brother's solidarity.

"Things are good at the garage, then?"

"Busy as hell, especially without Liz there to run the office, but we're doing all right."

Kieran turned to leave but hesitated, then turned back to Tom. "I heard from Mr. Murphy last week. He wants to retire."

"What about dad's shop?"

"It ain't dad's shop any more, is it? Murph wants to sell. Told me he'd sell to me before anyone if I wanted it."

Tom's eyes widened. "Do you?"

"Don't know. We've talked about going back to Dublin a few times." Kieran paused, then added with a laugh, "I think Liz hates the thought of the boys growing up with English accents instead of Irish."

Tom laughed at this. "Fair concern."

"Don't know if I could swing it, though. I'd have to sell this place first."

"Well, whatever you decide tell me, and I'll help."

"OK. Well, I best be off."

"Hey, Kieran." Tom's brother turned at the door. "Thanks for watching out for me."

Kieran smiled and was on his way.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Tom limped over without the crutches.

"What'd you forget?"

Except it wasn't Kieran. It was Sybil.

The goofy grin came back to his face, and he pulled her to him with the intention of continuing the kiss from earlier this afternoon. But before his lips reached hers, she put her fingers on his to stop their forward motion.

Tom narrowed his eyes. "Sybil, I really hope you don't expect me to go back to life without kissing now that I know what it's like."

Still in his arms, she responded, "I know it's hard but the rule is still in place."

"And so what was that earlier? Because I don't remember being the one who started it."

She smiled. "I was making a point. Are you not going to let me in?"

He hobbled out of her way and closed the door behind them.

She helped him back to the couch, where she sat next to him and snuggled up to him.

They played with each other's hands for a few minutes. Then, she asked quietly, "Do you want me to ask Nurse James about reassigning you?"

Tom pulled away so he could look her in the eye. "No," he said with a long sigh. "Are we mad for putting things off?"

Sybil laughed. "Yes. But I don't want to stop being your nurse, and I want to respect the rules. I don't want everyone at my job to think I'm taking it lightly."

She put her hand on his cheek and ran her thumb along his lips, causing him to close his eyes. "But," she added, "we have already broken the rule once tonight."

He leaned into her, eyes still closed, "Might as well get our money's worth."

And just like that, they were kissing again. Not urgently and feverishly as before, but slow, languid, each wanting to savor every sensation, every feeling.

After a few minutes, before things got too heated and hands started to wander, they pulled away but remained close, foreheads leaning against each other.

"I'm sorry about what I said before," Tom said quietly.

"Why would you be sorry?" Sybil asked. "You're were right."

Tom moved back slightly but kept her in his arms. "I wasn't really angry at you, though. More at myself."

"What do you mean?"

"The day after this first happened, Larry's mother came to see me. I was still out of it, so she spoke with Kieran. She was very apologetic, he said, but asked if we would take a settlement from them instead of going to the police. I just wanted to be done with things. I didn't want to drag it out, not in the state I was in. It went totally against what I might have done in my right mind, under different circumstances, and I guess I didn't realize until today how much guilt I felt about letting them dictate what happened after."

"You could still go to the police."

"After all this time, with no witnesses, it would just be my word against his. There's no proof."

Sybil bit her lip, then reached for her handbag on the coffee table. She took out her mobile and after taking a deep breath turned back to Tom. "This is the reason I came over."

She handed him the phone, and his jaw dropped seeing the picture of himself on the pavement so many nights ago.

"Tom, he actually got out of the car, took a photo of you and sent it to me. This is proof."

Tom didn't know what to say. He just kept staring at the picture.

"Whatever you want to do, I promise I will support you no matter what," she said strongly, squeezing his hand.

He smiled. "Thing is, now that things are good again, and I have you, I don't know if I want to upset the balance anymore."

"Well, it's here. I'll send it to you and I won't delete it until you decide what you want to do."

"Do you suppose he remembers taking it?"

"Well, if they do send you settlement papers, the sum they offer might be an indicator that they know there's something out there to incriminate him."

Tom thought about this for a long moment. Whether or not Larry remembered the photo was out there, it gave Tom a bit of a trump card. He still didn't want their money, but maybe keeping the photo in his pocket might prove useful. He looked over to the stack of file boxes of financial records that Gregson had sent over the previous week for him to start going through. He wasn't done with Martin and Larry Grey yet, and now he had something they didn't.

Turning back to Sybil, Tom took the mobile out of her hand and set it back on the coffee table. "Well, we can deal with that later," he said pulling her back into him. "I believe there are more pressing matters to attend to."

"Oh?" She said playfully, settling back into his arms.

"Making up for lost time."

And they were kissing again. And this time, the hands did wander.


	8. Gaming the System

 

_The entire weekend Sybil had been a mess. She couldn't shake the image of Tom lying on the ground. She needed to know what had happened to him, but how?_

_The afternoon that she was supposed to be going in to her hospital to fill out her new employee paperwork and meet with the head nurse for her schedule, just three days after "that night," Sybil finally broke. She called Sally again, using the same story she had made up to get Tom's number in the hope that the always chatty secretary might offer some clue as to how he was doing._

_"Hello, Grey family residence."_

_"Hi, Sally, it's Sybil."_

_"Oh, hello, Miss Crawley, I'm sorry I haven't had the time to look for your earring in the car. Things have been a bit topsy-turvy the last few days. What with everything that happened on Friday night."_

_"Actually, I wanted to let you know that you needn't bother. I found it."_

_"Splendid. One less thing for me to do."_

_"Um, Sally, I was wondering. After we hung up Saturday morning it, um . . . it occurred to me that after you told me what happened, I didn't ask whether Tom was OK. Do you happen to know?"_

_"Oh, he's going to be fine. "_

_Sybil let out a massive sigh of relief._

_Sally continued, "He's a bit banged up, but Mrs. Grey went to see him, and she says he's going to recover. She was in a right state on Saturday morning, ranting against Mr. Grey about how he'd corrupted her son. I swear I've never seen her like that. We spent hours trying to find Mr. Branson's hospital."_

_"Which hospital is it?"_

_"Oh my, I hear Mrs. Grey coming, best hang up before she hears me gossiping. Glad you found your trinket Miss Crawley. Let us know if there's anything else."_

_Then, before Sybil had a chance to protest, Sally hung up._

_Sybil ended the call on her mobile frustrated at having been so close to finding out his whereabouts, but at least she knew he was OK._

**_XXX_ **

_A few hours later, she was at her hospital at the desk of one Nurse Roberta James, who was giving her a quick overview of the department after having taken her on a tour. Sybil wouldn't be starting for a couple of weeks, but Nurse James liked to have all new staff up to speed early since she made out her schedules so far in advance._

_Sybil would be assisting Dr. Clarkson, a board-certified physical therapist whose specialty was post-surgical rehabilitation for knee and hip procedures. Nurse James was going over what Sybil's day-to-day duties would be in the ward, outside of her work with patients, when a young blond woman came into the office without knocking._

_"Nurse James, they've called from the surgical ward to say someone's ACL reconstruction has been postponed to Wednesday because of the pins or whatever they've just put in his leg so to move his start on the rehab schedule back one week."_

_Nurse James took an exasperated breath. "Miss Braithwait, I don't suppose it occurred to you to write down the name of the patient."_

_"Oh, I guess not."_

_"So how am I supposed to know which patient's treatment to move back? Shall I guess?"_

_"I could call back."_

_"Why don't you do that."_

_Nurse James looked back to Sybil and rolled her eyes. "You'll have to get used to Edna."_

_Sybil smiled._

_A minute later, Edna returned. "It's Tom Branson."_

_Sybil's head shot up._

It has to be him, _she thought immediately_.

_Edna closed the door behind her, and Nurse James made a note on a pad on her desk._

_"I'll have to redo next month, ugh." She looked back at Sybil. "I must say I'm very glad you're joining us, Nurse Crawley. We've been understaffed for so long, you'll definitely make my work easier. So where were we?"_

_Sybil's head was still spinning with the knowledge that she and Tom were in the same building. She could go see him right now. But what would she say? What could she possibly say to make up for this? She had driven Larry to this—inadvertently so, perhaps, but she could not deny it. How could she face Tom with that knowledge? That last question lingered in her mind, but ultimately it didn't matter. Regardless of what she would say, she wanted to see him again. She_ needed _to see him again._

_"Nurse Crawley?"_

_Nurse James' voice pulled her out of her reverie._

_"Oh, I'm sorry, Nurse James. Go on. That is, you were taking about the filing, I believe."_

_"Oh, yes, our system—"_

_"Actually Nurse James, I apologize for the interruption, but I was wondering, about the patient the receptionist just mentioned."_

_"Mr. Branson?"_

_"Yes, when do you suppose he'll start his physical therapy?"_

_The question took Nurse James by surprise. "Oh, I don't know, looks like things are changing, so I'd have to check with his surgeon. He has a very long road though, he'll be on crutches for three or four months. What's your interest?"_

_"Well, if it's the person who I think it is, I know him. And, without trying to usurp your procedures, well, . . . would it be possible for me to work with him?"_

_"You know him?"_

_"Yes, I know a bit about how he came by his injuries. I, um, I think it would do well for him to have a nurse he's familiar with."_

_Sybil was speaking quickly afraid that if she stopped to think about what she was asking, she might change her mind—or Nurse James might see through her intentions._

_Nurse James looked at her for a long moment. Sybil touched her hand to her cheek and could feel that she was flushed._

_"It's a bit unorthodox, I must say. We have rules regarding treatment of family members or loved ones, but if he's just an acquaintance . . ." Nurse James trailed off, seeking confirmation from Sybil, who only nodded afraid that if she spoke she'd give away too much regarding just what kind of an acquaintance he was._

_"Well, I don't suppose I see the harm in it," Nurse James spoke slowly as if not quite convinced. "But we still have to see whether his schedule aligns with yours and get sign off form Dr. Clarkson. "_

_"Thank you."_

_There would be time in the coming days for Sybil to second guess what she had done. For now, though, she was just happy. She'd get to help him. More to the point, she'd get to be near him._

**XXX**

After a couple of hours of kissing and talking and talking and kissing, after ordering take away for dinner and after a solemn vow (as solemn as two people who'd just been giddily groping one another could be) to go back behind the lines that they were not supposed to cross (a promise ironically sealed with a kiss) Sybil headed home.

Among the things they'd discussed was getting a walking cane for Tom, whose gait had improved enough to no longer require the use of crutches, but who still had a pronounced limp and had not regained sufficient strength to walk completely unaided.

They'd also talked about his return to fulltime work at the journal's offices, likely in the next few weeks.

Gregson had started sending Tom files from previous investigations, complaints and inquiries of HG Bank by the Financial Services Authority. Gregson had also put two more reporters on the story to cultivate sources close to the family to learn as much as they could about their private accounts. Tom was getting their notes, too. All the information was starting to come together and make sense to him. He felt like he was close to something, but he still wasn't sure what that was.

But as eager as he was to work and as stir crazy as he was getting in his flat, Sybil didn't want him to rush things by putting too much stress on his knee and the pins in his leg—not for her, not for work.

She knew how much he wanted to be with her, but for her to understand why the journal was so important, he had to reveal to her what exactly he'd been doing at home.

Tom recounted to her his conversation with Gregson on what was supposed to have been his first day of work about looking for a weakness in Martin Grey's financial armor. Tom knew and admitted to Sybil that the work went against his initial instinct not to make a fuss after the incident with Larry in an effort to leave it behind him quickly and move on with his life. Tom was still adamant about not taking the Greys' money—whatever they ended up offering him—and he still didn't care what happened to Larry, especially now that Tom no longer had to worry about how that would affect Sybil. But ignoring what Larry had done to him, in Tom's mind, was not the same as ignoring what Martin did, through his unethical and illegal behavior, to the financial system at large and to people who could not fight back.

He'd said as much to Sybil. "Martin and others like him are, _at best_ , irresponsible stewards of a finance system that they chose to turn into their own personal casino. Their excesses helped tip the U.K. and the rest of the world into an economic crisis that the middle and working classes—people who had nothing to do with what precipitated it—are paying hardest for because of austerity measures pushed by men whose path into politics is littered with contributions from the Martin Greys of this world."

"And at worst?" Sybil asked with a smirk.

"At worst, HG Bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Sybil laughed. "That's quite vivid imagery."

Tom laughed at himself. "Sorry. Sometimes I get carried away."

"Don't apologize. I agree with you wholeheartedly. As insincere as that may seem coming from the daughter of a wealthy earl."

Tom smiled. "The earl should be glad he has a daughter who cares."

Sybil smiled back, cheeks blushing ever so slightly.

"My point is, Sybil," Tom continued. "This is why I wanted to be a journalist. To shine a light on things that were unfair. I don't know exactly how it'll unfold considering I'm so close to the story—that's something I have to discuss with Gregson when I do go back—but this is the battle that I've chosen to fight. And if you're serious about being with me, you need to know that."

"Tom, I gamed the medical system just so I could be in your vicinity for the duration of your treatment because I knew it would last almost a year. Obviously, I'm in this for the long haul. I'm going to support you no matter what. I hope you know that by now."

He smiled, relieved that this wouldn't drive a wedge between them.

"Martin won't make things easy on you," she added, "but nothing is going to shake me, OK? Not after everything that's happened."

"What about your family? This won't sit well with them."

"I've told you that my father hates Martin, and it's at least in part because he thinks Martin's a crook. My granny, too. She doesn't like anyone who makes too much money."

Tom raised his eyebrows in question.

"It's a stupid aristocratic prejudice. In her view, the only respectable way to get to be rich is to inherit."

Tom laughed in spite of himself.

Sybil added firmly, eager to impress her point, "They'll be concerned for Elizabeth, but they won't think less of you. And it doesn't matter anyway because they aren't getting a say in who I choose anymore. And I choose you."

The next morning in his flat, looking back on the conversation, Tom wondered whether other people who'd been hit by cars had ever felt this lucky after the fact.

Of course, after having that thought, a messenger arrived with the settlement papers from the Grey family to rain on his parade.

Tom was ready to do battle with Martin, but here was Larry reminding him, in the form of legal documents, that he had to be dealt with, too.

He'd opened up to Sybil. Now, he'd have to talk to a lawyer. And he'd have to tell his brother everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I modeled the reporting Tom is doing on the work of Matt Taibi who writes about the financial sector for Rolling Stone magazine. The quote "A great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" is from an article he wrote on the investment firm Goldman Sachs.


	9. A Trial Balloon

 

Tom didn't have the money for a high-priced lawyer—certainly not of the caliber that would be at the Grey family's disposal—but when Sybil said the one such lawyer she knew, her brother-in-law Matthew, would be willing to help him free of charge, Tom was hesitant to accept. He didn't want to embroil her or her family into his drama with the Grey family anymore than they already were. So it took a week of her persistent pestering for him to finally relent and give Matthew Crawley a call.

Matthew and Sybil's sister Mary had just returned from a long holiday when Tom reached out to him, and Matthew was up to his ears in catch-up work, so it wasn't until about a week after Tom's initial call that Matthew was able to carve out some time on a Sunday evening to come by Tom's flat to look at the settlement papers. Tom didn't care that he wouldn't be giving the Greys a prompt response. They had taken their time in contacting him. And already more than three months had passed since the incident. As far he was concerned, he had all the time in the world.

When the day arrived, Tom was surprised to find that he was nervous. But the more he thought about it, the more it became obvious that his nerves had little to do with the legal issues he might have to deal with, with what would happen between him and the Greys or with the fact that all of this might affect his work, which he was going to discuss with Gregson in his actual office the very next day, almost half a year since he'd "gone to work" the way normal people do. None of that was to blame for his nervousness. What was to blame was the fact that he would be meeting a member of Sybil's family for the first time. Matthew, for better or for worse, was his entry point. Matthew would influence how the rest of her family came to see Tom and whether or not they would accept him. Tom wanted— _needed_ —to make a good impression. _Of course_ , he was nervous.

Prior to today, Tom had been so worried about how to tell his brother about the full extent of their relationship, he'd spent only very little time considering how Sybil would be revealing it to her own family, her parents, in particular. Tom wished there was a way Sybil could simply introduce him as her boyfriend who was a journalist and who had been in a bad accident a few months ago, but that was impossible. The Crawleys knew the Greys too well. Given Sybil's past relationship with Larry, there was simply no getting around telling them what had happened, especially now that Tom was seeking Matthew's help in extricating himself from whatever legal traps the Greys intended to entangle him in. When she had first suggested Matthew's help, she'd told Tom that he and Mary already knew at least some of the details of their relationship—namely, that she was his nurse and that she had met him while he was working for the Greys. The rest of the details, the important ones, would be filled in for Matthew this evening. It was, in a sense, a trial balloon.

The night she had come over during which he'd told her about his work on Martin Grey, Sybil had said she did not believe her parents would object to her dating a financial journalist who was investigating people they knew, nor would they object to someone who had been a chauffeur at some point, nor would they object to the guy whom she had dumped Larry for. The question was, would they be willing to accept all three things in one person?

And as if that weren't enough for Tom to think about on this particular morning, there was another question that remained unanswered: Would Tom's family, specifically Kieran, accept Sybil?

Matthew was going to be coming by the flat at 6 o'clock, so around noon, Tom called Kieran to ask if it was OK for him to stop by. The family, going a bit baby-watch crazy, awaiting the any-time-now arrival of its newest member, was all too eager for a distraction. Tom headed over knowing what he had to tell his brother—about Sybil and about the settlement—but not knowing how Kieran would react to it all.

**XXX**

Liam and Kellen Branson, at eight and six years of age, were accustomed to greeting their uncle by tackling him at the doorway, then each clinging to a leg as he dragged them across the threshold and into the living room of the humble but cozy home that their parents had made for them in South London. Once inside, the boys would let go and Tom would chase them into the small garden in back, where they'd spend the next half-hour or so playing football a bit too enthusiastically for Liz's taste given the proximity and fragility of the mudroom windows. So if Sybil thought that the lengthy duration of Tom's rehabilitation was most annoying to her, it was only because she had not met his nephews. When they saw Tom, newly freed of his crutches and only using a cane, the boys practically threw him a party. Tom always loved coming to see them.

And he loved the warmth he felt in the house. Built in the 1920s, the small, attached house had been a steal for Kieran and Liz when they first moved in as a childless couple because of the very many repairs it needed. Over the years, many of the upgrades had been done while others were put aside in the wake of the needs of two energetic and rambunctious boys.

This time around, Tom followed the boys to their room for a game of Ludo, which had become a favorite substitute activity for the boys and their uncle since playing countless games of it while he was still laid up in the hospital. Liz would never accuse her children of being well behaved, but even she could admit that nothing had taught them patience and understanding like seeing their superhero uncle at less than his full self.

After playing with them for a while, Tom emerged from their room and sat down to have tea with Kieran and a very big, very uncomfortable Liz, whose activity was still limited to lying down in bed or sitting in her kitchen in these final days of her pregnancy. She, of course, wanted nothing more than to grill Tom about his new girlfriend.

"Well, it's funny you should mention her," Tom said with a small laugh. He figured Sybil was as good an entry point into the ordeal as any, being the one bright spot about the whole thing.

"Kieran mentioned that she was your nurse," Liz said. "Are you allowed to date her or are you waiting until you get well?"

"We're waiting," Tom said, then added with a sigh, "It's easier some days than others."

This made both Kieran and Liz laugh.

"But the truth is," he went on, avoiding their eyes and scratching the back of his head, "I, um, I actually met her before this happened."

"Really?" Kieran said.

Tom looked at his brother, trying to summon the courage to say everything that he needed to say. "Yes, and it's a bit of a long, complicated story, one that I am not sure you're going to like every part of."

Kieran and Liz both looked puzzled.

"Now, you've got me really intrigued," Liz said.

Tom let out a humorless laugh.

"She's, um, she . . . I met her while I was filling in with the Greys. She's Larry's ex."

Both Liz and Kieran let out a loud, "WHAT!?" Liz's was amused, Kieran's not so much.

"Jesus, Tommy, what are you doing?" Kieran asked.

"It just happened, OK. I wasn't out to chase the guy's girl. He tried to insult me once. It was a pathetic effort, but she felt bad and sought me out to apologize for him. It sort of kept going from there. The nursing was just a coincidence. I mean, after the whole . . . _thing_ happened, I didn't think I would see her again."

"Do you mean to say there was something going on between you while you were Larry's driver?" Liz asked, now sharing a bit of Kieran's concern.

"Yes and no. Yes in the sense that I liked her and she liked me, but we were . . . she didn't cheat on him with me if that's what you're asking. It was just a sort of flirtation, but I didn't believe it was going anywhere."

"And her being your nurse, that was just like . . . accidental?" Liz asked.

"Yeah, I guess, me being at her hospital anyway. She asked to be my nurse once she realized that I was admitted to the hospital where she was working. But it's not like we planned it all. It just happened."

Kieran let out a sarcastic snort. "Funny how things just _happen_ to you."

Liz raised her hand, as if to stop him from veering the conversation off track, and looked at Tom seriously. "How long had she been broken up with Larry when he hit you with the car?"

Tom hesitated. This was, he knew, where it was going to get complicated. He rubbed his eyes with his hands without saying anything for a few minutes. He dropped his hands and sighed, but just as he was about to say something, Kieran spoke first.

"She's the reason he hit you, isn't she?"

Tom spoke quietly, but forcefully. "No, the reason he hit me is that he's an entitled asshole who thinks he can get away with anything."

Kieran arched his eyebrows and smirked. "So when did she break up with him?"

Tom sighed again. "That night."

"And he knew that she was breaking up with him because of you?" Liz asked quietly, not wanting to stir up Kieran any more, but wanting to help Tom sort through it all.

The answer to her question, though, was also complicated. Tom considered going into detail, but at the end of the day it wasn't necessary. There was no point in dragging out the argument. "Yes," he said finally.

Kieran stood up and started pacing, clearly angry. "I've never been able to talk you into or out of anything in my life. But you let me talk you into listening to Elizabeth Gray and not going to the police even though you knew he did this _on purpose_?"

Liz interjected, "Kieran, you don't know if he did it on—"

"Of course, he did it on bloody purpose! Why else would he do it!? The guy's not a fecking idiot! Never once in the years I drove him around, did he ever ask me to get out of the car. Not once. I half believed he didn't know how to drive. The reason he told Tom to get out of the car was because he was going to hit him." Kieran stopped his pacing and turned to Tom, "Do you deny it?"

Tom, who had set his head on the table during Kieran's rant, didn't bother to lift his head back up before shaking his head.

Karen said firmly, "You need to end this with her."

At this, Tom looked up quickly, but before the word was out of his mouth, Liz, who was looking equally angry at her husband, said it for him. "Why?"

Kieran looked at her, "Don't you start encouraging this."

"And what exactly would be the good of his breaking up with her if he still wants to be with her? The bastard has already done his damage. What more could he possibly do now, especially since you haven't gone to the police—which you could still do by the way," she said, turning back to Tom.

Kieran sat back down at the table with a serious look in his eye. "This needs to end, Tommy, you don't know—neither of you know—how powerful this family is. You need to cut off all ties with her now. Don't give them another reason to come after you."

Tom sighed and leaned back in the chair. "Well, you're definitely not going to like this part."

"There's more?" Kieran asked.

"You know that job I got with the online political journal?"

Both Liz and Kieran nodded.

"I've not been going into the office, but I've been doing research for a story. The long and the short of it is that I'm helping investigate financial crimes at HG Bank."

Kieran threw his arms up in exasperation. "Tom, Martin Gray has the fecking prime minister on his speed dial. Do you honestly think there's anything good will come out of this?"

"Yes, I do! That maybe men like him won't get to make a mockery out of our finance laws."

Kieran sighed. "I know perfectly well the guy is a crook, but this on top of what they'll put you through when you do go to the police, and once you've done that, what Larry will do when he knows you're still with this girl—"

"I'm not going to leave Sybil. And I don't plan on going to the police anyway, I don't care what Larry did to me."

"So you're going to take their money?" Liz asked surprised.

"I didn't say that."

"What do you have planned, then?" She replied.

"That might depend on you."

"Us?" Kieran asked confused.

"Well, I do plan on continuing my work on Martin Grey. I can't let him get away with fleecing the general public just because he wants another Aston Martin—not if there's something I can do about it. But I probably won't be able to put my name on the story."

"What do you mean?" Liz asked.

"At first, it was just me working on this, but it's a big story, so my editor has assigned several others to cover various elements of it. But with how close I am to it, my connection with the family through Larry, people may criticize it as a conflict of interest, so it's likely that my editor may ask me to take my name off the story. I'm going to talk about it with him tomorrow."

"I still don't understand what that has to do with us," Liz said.

"I never intended on accepting anything from them, but Kieran said you guys wanted to go back to Ireland. If my name's not going to be on the story anyway, I'd be willing to take something from the Greys if I could give it you. You know, to help buy back dad's shop from Mr. Murphy. I know these months haven't been easy."

"Do you think _I_ want to be beholden to them, Tommy?" Kieran asked with a weary laugh. "They paid me for my work, and that's fine, but I won't take hush money. Don't be silly."

"I'm being serious. It could help you."

"It's sweet of you to think of us, but we couldn't ask you to do that for us," Liz said.

"I wouldn't be doing anything really."

Liz took one of Tom's hands into both of hers. "If we did this, and someone found out, it would hurt your reputation as a journalist, even if you never put your name on anything about the Grey family, wouldn't it?"

Tom sighed. "It might."

"So why risk it?" Liz continued, "This career means everything to you, Tommy. Don't be reckless with it, certainly not to help us. We're _fine_ , I promise."

"We are," Kieran affirmed. "And we're the ones who are meant to be looking out for you, not the other way around." His expression softened into a smile. Despite the frustration Kieran had felt at his younger brother just minutes before, the fact he would always look out for him remained true.

Tom smiled back. The relief he felt was such that his eyes glazed over with tears. "Thank you."

"Besides," Liz said, still holding onto Tom's hand. "Do you think those lads would ever forgive us if we took them to live somewhere away from their favorite uncle?"

He laughed. Then asked, "And Sybil, can I bring her by?"

"Of course, you can!" Liz exclaimed, and, nodding her head at Kieran, added, "Don't you worry about him. I'll bring him around. He can't manage to disagree with me about anything for long."

"Oh, hush up," Kieran responded looking at his wife from the corner of his eye, with a smirk.

"Don't give me your guff," Liz said, turning to Kieran, "I'll start arguing my point now, as a matter of fact. First, I think any girl who tosses aside a right prick like that for a Branson boy is obviously very clever and should be given a chance."

"You've got a point there," Kieran said, with a sigh and a smile.

"Second, it's high time Tommy settled down," Liz continued.

"I suppose."

Tom laughed, watching them go back and forth.

"Third—"

"Oh, fine! Let's just meet her and see what she's like."

Liz winked at Tom. "Candy off a baby."

**XXX**

Matthew and Sybil arrived right on time, the latter holding a bag full of groceries. And as Matthew and Tom discussed Tom's options, sitting in the living room, Sybil made dinner for the three of them in the kitchen.

To begin, Tom recounted the whole story, starting all the way back when he'd received the job offer from Gregson and quit his previous job, not leaving out a single detail. When Tom got to Larry's blowjob that drove Tom out of the car, Matthew laughed and rubbed his forehead.

"The sad thing about that piece of the story is that he's not even the worst of Robert and Cora's efforts on Sybil's behalf. Last year, we went to dinner with her and another bloke, and he made the waitress cry."

"Why are her parents so anxious for her to get married?"

"They're old fashioned, and they were 'blessed' "—Matthew rolled his eyes at that particular word—"with two daughters who found their mates at university."

"That's how you met Mary?"

"Yes. We took a class in 19th century British literature our first year, and the professor liked to arrange the seats alphabetically."

"Oh, your name is Crawley, too," Tom said with a smile. "I'd actually wondered if you'd taken hers."

Matthew laughed. "I get that a lot. Mary enjoys it. Anyway, after Mary and me, Edith graduated with an engagement ring as well. Anthony was her professor, but he wasn't married, so the scandal was limited to the fact that he had been her thesis adviser. She wasn't allowed to graduate with honors, since the high marks he'd given her were under suspicion, but they didn't much care."

"So Sybil's the odd one out?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Why don't her sisters speak up for her?"

"Well, speaking for Mary, she didn't realize how unhappy Sybil was until recently."

"Sybil's unhappy?"

Matthew smiled. "No, on the contrary, she's never been happier than she has been the last few months since she's been treating you. That's the point. We didn't realize that she was unhappy before."

Tom smiled bashfully.

Matthew went on. "Sybil is the most forgiving person I know. She puts up with a lot from her family and always does it with a smile. I've fallen down on my duty as brother and haven't offered to rough up the men who break her heart, but since we're sitting here and in your current debilitated state, I could probably take you, I'll go ahead and make the threat now."

"Don't be too sure of yourself. I'm Irish."

Matthew laughed. He liked Tom. Matthew picked his pen back up to take notes again. "So where were we?"

Tom finished his story, then gave Matthew time to read over the papers the Greys had sent over. While Matthew was doing that, Tom stood and ambled over to the kitchen and stood at the doorway for few minutes watching Sybil moving around the stove.

"What's for dinner?"

She looked over her shoulder and smiled. "Pasta primavera. It's one of three dishes I know how to make."

He walked all the way in and put his hand on her back as she sautéed the vegetables. "Smells good."

"It'll be ready in ten minutes."

"I like the way you look in my kitchen."

"I like the way I feel in your kitchen."

Tom smiled and crossed his arms as he leaned against the counter. "Nurse James should be very happy we have a chaperone tonight."

She laughed. "So have you tried the cane yet?"

"Today, actually, I used it when I went to see my brother."

"How are they?"

"Good. They'd like to meet you."

"Something smells good in here."

Both Tom and Sybil turned to see Matthew walking into the kitchen.

"Are you all done?" Sybil asked. "This will just be a few more minutes."

Matthew motioned to Tom. "Step into my office."

Tom smirked and followed him back to the living room.

"It's standard language," Matthew said, sitting back down on the sofa and shuffling the papers he'd spread out over the coffee table. "You take our money and relinquish your right to sue us any time in the future. There's no specific mention of you turning over evidence, which means Larry either doesn't remember taking the photograph or doesn't know Sybil has given it to you. I won't mention it in my response."

"Response?"

"I'll write a letter as your counsel letting them know you don't plan on suing them or taking the matter to the police, but that you won't be signing away your legal rights or accept this or any settlement."

"How will they respond?"

"I don't know. They want a promise that you'll keep quiet, but they can't force you sign anything to that effect. It's possible one of the family will try to contact you directly. Maybe Elizabeth will pay you another visit."

Tom thought it over for a minute. "You know, I don't think she will."

"No?"

"She said that if I went to the police, Larry would receive no punishment because he would fight the charges and likely win. The way Kieran described her demeanor . . . the word he used was _defeated_. If this is coming from her husband's lawyers, I doubt she's going to care much whether I do what they ask. They have to know that if I was ever going to go to the police, I would have done so already. This is just for Martin and Larry's peace of mind—something to make sure a little person like me doesn't have the power to make trouble for them in the future. But if I'm right about Elizabeth, she won't care about their peace of mind. If this is hanging over Larry's head, she'll see the uncertainty as a just punishment for him."

"I wish Cora could help us get a read on her, but Mary said they haven't talked in some time. Apparently, Elizabeth has been out of the country recently."

Tom sighed. "I guess we'll just have to wait to see what happens."

**XXX**

After dinner, Matthew stayed long enough to help them finish off a second bottle of wine. When it was time to go, he shook Tom's hand and said, "Well, Tom, in spite of the circumstances, it was nice to meet you. Hope we get to see more of you."

Sybil took the hand of Tom's that wasn't shaking Matthew's and pulled herself into him, saying, "You will!"

Tom smiled, "Thank you so much for your help."

Once Matthew was out the door, Sybil and Tom, still holding hands, turned to each other.

"Sooo . . ." she said playfully.

"So, I think you should go also, unless you're prepared to join me in another round of rule-breaking."

Sybil narrowed her eyes. "It's tempting, but I have something I think you'll like better."

"Oh?"

Sybil went to her handbag and pulled out a photograph of herself and handed it to Tom. "And I'd like one of you."

"It's a lovely photo, my darling, but I don't think this is better than kissing."

"It's meant to help."

"Help with what?"

"Please don't make me say it."

Tom laughed. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about."

Sybil took a deep breath. "Just because we can't have sex yet, doesn't mean we can't, you know, have sex." She gestured with her hand as if suggesting he take her thought a step further.

Recognition slowly made its way across Tom's face. "You want me to look at this when I . . ."

"YES!"

"What makes you think I do that at all," he said with a smirk.

"Tom, you're a man. Of course, you masturbate. If you're telling me you don't think of me when you do it, I'm going to be quite disappointed."

Tom grinned. "I apologize for having to say these words under such bizarre circumstances."

"What words?"

"I love you."

Sybil smiled dreamily. "I love you, too."

"You'd better be on your way now, so I can get on with it," he said, waving the picture around.

They both kept grinning as Sybil picked up her bag and coat and walked to the door. She stepped through and was just about to close it behind her when she stopped, ran back to where he was standing in the living room planted a kiss firmly on his lips, whispered, "That ought to help," then ran back out, giggling, and shut the door behind her.

Tom flopped down on the sofa, laughing. She would be the death of him. But what a sweet death it would be.


	10. Welcome to the Big Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets into Tom's work now that he's back at the office. I've modeled the reporting team, including the names, after characters in State of Play—not the movie with Ben Affleck, but the original British mini-series with Bill Nighy. If you haven't seen it, it's FANTASTIC (and there's bonus James MacAvoy). It's also about a reporter working on a big story even though he has a very personal connection to it.
> 
> Regarding the financial story, what they are investigating is a detail from an actual trade that happened on Wall Street in 2008, grandly embellished by my imagination. If anyone is reading who knows anything about finance, here's my disclaimer: No realism actually intended. Just having some S/T fun here.

 

 

The next morning, Tom woke up marginally less sexually frustrated and ready to start his job for real.

He changed several times before deciding on a white button down shirt, navy trousers and a gray sport coat. Looking at himself in the mirror that hung on the back of his bathroom door, he laughed thinking how much his clothes, matched with the cane, made him look like an aging college professor. But it couldn't be helped.

He'd been limping around his flat for days, but if he did so too long without rest or the support of the cane, his knee would start throbbing, which frustrated him. The loss of the crutches had made him feel like the end was close, but Sybil, as gently as she could, had reminded him that it only meant he was about half-way through.

"Tom, a piece of your hamstring is now acting as your central knee ligament, and it needs time to learn how to do that," she'd told him. With an impish twinkle in her eye, she'd added, "More to the point, it needs to be strong enough to do what I'm going to need it to do."

"And how's your flexibility? Because I have some ideas in mind for you, too, you know," he'd responded, with a grin.

All of that, of course, made Tom all the more anxious to be at full strength.

Still, he was happy that there was progress. His rehab sessions were down to two days a week. Sybil had him riding the stationary bike and doing squats and leg extensions to strengthen the replacement ligament.

He liked to joke that she was only making him do all that exercising so he'd have a nicer bum.

"I won't deny it'll be an added benefit," she'd say with a smile.

"I doubt mine will ever be as nice as yours," he'd respond.

Then he'd see that smile, and those beautiful, blushing cheeks.

No. Full strength couldn't come soon enough.

**XXX**

As soon as Tom stepped into the newsroom, carrying a messenger bag full of as many of his notes and files as he could comfortably carry, the receptionist ran up to meet him.

"Hi, I'm Molly," she said, eagerly shaking his hand. "You're Tom Branson, aren't you?"

"Yes," Tom said, smiling. "Is there a desk for me?"

"Oh, yes, right this way." She walked him through the roughly arranged desks, stopping at an empty one adjacent to the three head offices in the back. "You'll find working near Michael and Cameron a blessing _and_ a curse. Fair warning. Cameron likes to bark orders through the glass."

As he set his bag on the desk, he noticed the hastily made handwritten sign directly above it. It read, "Finance desk."

"Only the best in decorative services here," Molly said, rolling her eyes. "I put the paperwork for your credentials in the top drawer. Fill it out, then ask Charles over in photo to take your headshot and bring everything back to me, and I'll have your badge ready before you go this afternoon. Anything else?"

"I'm good, thanks."

Molly turned to leave then turned back around, "By the way, your phone extension is under the phone. Your cards will be ready next week. Some reporters like to give out the general number instead of their own so I'll screen their calls. Except than when they do that, I'll go into the car park and take the air out of their tires. Just something to think about."

She smiled brightly, then walked back to her desk.

Tom laughed. He set his cane down then moved to grab the papers for his credentials from the drawer.

A few minutes later, he'd just sat down and turned on his computer when two women approached him, one about his age, the other just a few years older.

"Branson, right?"

Tom grabbed his cane and pushed himself up.

"I'm Della Smith," said the younger of the two. "This is Helen Pregger. We're the ones who've been pulling the FSA stuff for you on HG."

"It's Tom," he said, shaking both their hands. "Thanks so much for that. I know filing public information requests is not very fun."

"Michael's been sending us your memos," Helen said. "It definitely feels like we're close to something. Did you get the salary disclosures from Pete as well?"

"Yeah, and I think I may have found what we're looking for. I was going to update Gregson on it today."

"Are you ready now?" Della asked.

"Sure."

"I'll get Pete and Dan," Helen said and headed toward the other end of the newsroom.

As Della went to knock on Gregson's door, Tom smiled to himself. Less than ten minutes in and he was already in the thick of it.

A short while later, Tom was at the conference table in Cameron Foster's office with Gregson and the four other reporters on the team: Della, Helen, Pete Cheng and Dan Foster. Cameron, a tall man in his late 50s with a mane of blonde hair, had served as Tony Blair's head of communications for four years and was the journal's founder and principal financial backer. He'd tapped Gregson to run the newsroom, but as the publisher, Cameron involved himself in the editorial decisions on the journal's big stories. If they could nail it, this would be the biggest one yet.

Sitting there, Tom couldn't help but feel a little intimidated. _What exactly had Gregson seen in my clips from the Indy that made him think I would be ready for this_ , Tom thought. _What made_ me _think I was_?

"Well, Branson," Cameron started off, "We've been paying you to stay at home and put your feet up for three months. What do you have to report?"

Tom took a deep breath. _This is it._

"Do you remember Smith Brothers going under?"

"Who doesn't?" Cameron asked with a laugh.

"Well, a day before the stock started dropping, someone spent 1.7 million pounds on options that shorted the stock by half over nine days."

"You're kidding!" Gregson said.

"I heard about that actually," Cameron said. "A few MPs made some noise about it, but FSA didn't get deep into it, with the LIBOR issue heating up."

"There was a letter about it in the files Della and Helen sent. I don't know whether that meant they suspected HG Bank or if it was just a form letter, but that's what brought it to my attention, so I looked into the details."

"What was the payout?" Gregson asked.

"276 million pounds."

Helen raised her hand. "At the risk of sounding completely daft, I don't understand."

Dan, who was sitting next to her, spoke up, "Shorting stock means you reserve the right to sell it for less than its current price. It pays off when the stock goes down below the price you reserved. If a company's stock is being shorted it means that company might be in trouble. Basically, someone made a 1.7 million pound bet on the market that one of the oldest financial houses in the U.K. was going to go belly up in a week."

"But they couldn't have known," Helen replied. "The Smith Brothers bankruptcy came out of nowhere—that's what everyone was saying at the time."

"It _was_ a shock," Cameron said seriously. "Anyone who shorted Smith Brothers stock to the tune of 1.7 million knew something the rest of us didn't. It's insider trading, at _very_ the least."

Gregson looked back at Tom. "Are you saying it was HG?"

"It's complicated, but yes."

Cameron leaned back in his chair. "Uncomplicate it for us."

Tom looked around the room. All eyes were on him. "Martin Grey's name is on all three hedge funds in HG's portfolio as principal manager, but there are a half-dozen junior managers who do the actual work. The bank takes a fifteen percent fee on all gains on the funds. Martin takes five of that. The other ten goes into a pool from which the junior managers' get bonuses according to their activity."

"How so?" Gregson asked.

"They get ten percent of each trade they were responsible for. If a fund brings in 150 pounds in a day based on two trades, one that made 100 and one that made 50. Martin gets five percent of the 150 pounds. The manager who made the trade that netted 100 pounds gets ten percent of the 100 he made, and the manager responsible for the 50-pound trade gets ten percent of the 50 _he_ made."

"So the more you bring in, the bigger the bonus you get?" Helen asked.

"Yeah. But their cut doesn't go to them directly. It goes into a savings account, from which each of the bonuses is paid out of at the end of each quarter in a lump sum."

"My head hurts just listening," Della said. "It must be a nightmare for their accountants."

"That's the whole point," Cameron said. "You think an underfunded, understaffed government agency has the wherewithal to find a needle in this kind of haystack?"

"That's the issue," Tom said. "On one side of the ledger, the funds each send a certain amount into the market and get back a certain amount of returns. On the other side, you have the account that parcels out the bonuses, but because all junior managers work on all the funds, the money is virtually impossible to follow from one side to the other. Trying to identify which of the managers shorted the Smith Brothers' stock would take an act of God or—"

"Or the luck of the Irish?" Cameron said with an impish smile.

Tom smiled, his cheeks blushing ever so slightly.

"Don't keep us in suspense, here, Branson, I've got a heart condition," Cameron prodded.

"As I said, the managers' fees go into a savings account. It gains a small amount of interest, which is why they have to disclose it, and the interest is divided evenly among the managers, but it's not much because the account is supposed to zero out at the end of each quarter, when the bonuses are paid out."

"Supposed to?" Gregson asked.

"At the end of the third quarter last year, the account had 27.6 million pounds in it, or in other words—"

"Ten percent of 276 million," Gregson said.

Cameron was smiling giddily. "And to think I almost stayed home this morning."

"So they made an illegal trade and made a massive return, but nobody collected the fee?" Dan asked.

"Not then," Tom said.

"Is it not still there?" Gregson asked.

"At the end of the quarter that ended two months ago the account was zeroed out again."

"Won't it still be hard to figure out which manager it is, though?" Helen asked.

"It wasn't actually."

"You know who it is!? How?" Della asked.

"I don't know the name, just a personnel ID number. The bonus check he or she got was for the exact amount."

"Couldn't that be a coincidence?" asked Pete.

Dan piped up, "Why would a manager who didn't make any other gains last quarter cash in on a one-year-old deal that raised red flags. He had to have known it would give him away."

"Thing is, it's not a coincidence. I looked back, and that manager hasn't collected a bonus for the last five years. I went as far back as the records we were able to collect let me, and there isn't a single bonus check in that manager's disclosures. He took a base salary. That was it. Whoever it was, this was the only trade he ever made as an HG employee."

"OK, say we run the story," Helen said. "If that trade really is traceable to one manager, it'll be easy for HG to hang the guy out as a rogue trader, fire him and evade actual scrutiny, won't it?"

"Not if the manager is the boss's kid," Cameron said. He waited a beat for everyone to absorb what he'd just said. "That's who you think it is, don't you, Tom."

"I do think it's his account, but I'm not convinced Larry Grey himself made the trade. And I don't understand why he would have taken the money out now."

Suddenly, Gregson stood up and started talking in rapid fire. "We need to document this to the cent. Della and Helen, take Tom's notes and do as much digging as you can in the data we have to trace the money from the pool account back to the trade itself. Work with graphics to get the process of how the money is parceled out visually. We need people to understand how they obfuscate where the money goes. Pete, find out who sent the FSA letter about the trade and why they didn't follow up—make sure you don't talk to _anyone_ who might tip Martin off as to what we're looking into. Cameron, Dan, Tom, my office."

The three men followed Gregson next door. He started pacing excitedly, then stopped in front of Dan.

"Dan, I'm about to tell you something about Tom only Cam and I know. It stays in the room."

Dan nodded quickly and seriously.

"Tom was the Grey family chauffer for three weeks until Larry hit him with the family Rolls Royce in an alley near a night club three and a half months ago, which is why he's been working from home and using a cane. Later that night, Larry got picked up for driving drunk. The arresting officer suspected a hit and run, but had nothing to go on. Then, a security guard from the club near where this happened called the police about it but when police called him back, he'd conveniently forgotten what he saw. I knew all this, except for the fact that it was Tom, before he started working for us from a tip from a reliable source at City Police. Tom revealed it was him when we met the day he was supposed to start."

Then turning to Cameron and Tom, he continued, "Now, this is for all of you. The last week of June, my source told me the security guard came back. He'd been fired and was ready to sing about everything from drug sales to prostitution at the club. He said he saw a girl get out of the back seat of Larry Grey's car and come back into the club. Then he saw Larry get out of the back seat and into the front and drive off. The guard thought he heard Larry hit something. So he walked to the end of the parking lot. Larry was about half a block away but he was out of the car, apparently, and leaning over something in front of the car. The guard was called back into the club, but when he went to the end of the alley in the early morning, when the club closed, there was nothing there."

"Point, Michael," Cameron said with a roll of his eyes.

"The guard's statement prompted City Police to open an official inquest. Larry Grey was contacted by police four days before the end of the fiscal quarter. He's been out of the country since."

Tom's mind was reeling. He sat down in a chair in front of Gregson's desk. The other three, still standing, turned to look at him, as if expecting him to say something. "I had no idea."

Dan rehashed the details. "He gets a call from police. He needs to head out of town, so he makes a call in to work to ask for his bonus, gets a check for almost 28 million pounds and hops a plane. Not a bad plan."

"But why would he need that bonus. He's already rich, isn't he?" Tom asked.

Cameron answered. "Martin makes a good deal of money, but the family lives off of Elizabeth Grey's trust. That's likely the primary source of Larry's income. The base pay he gets from HG would help, but the bulk of his money would be what his grandfather earmarked for him."

"Point, dad," Dan said with a smirk.

"Contingency fund."

"What do you mean?" Dan asked.

"Elizabeth's father, Hamilton Pierce, was a proud Brit. He was in the diplomatic corps his entire career and he made a point of keeping his money—and it was a lot—in UK banks, instead of sending it to Swiss banks. Police have the power to freeze the accounts of fugitives as long as those accounts are local, so if Larry's lawyers are good—and we know he can afford the best money can buy—they would have told him not to leave without a contingency fund in case things got ugly with police."

"What do you think, Tom?" Gregson asked.

"It makes sense. But I'm still not sure Larry was the mastermind behind all this. He never works. I mean, _never_. Would he really have gone in to make not just any trade, but this one?"

"We could call him up to ask," Dan said with a laugh. "Getting a location and number out of Sally wouldn't be that hard."

Tom looked up at the mention of Elizabeth's secretary.

"Dan's been cultivating her as a source," Gregson explained.

"She's certainly chatty," Tom said.

"No joke," Dan said, smiling widely.

"There's no way he would agree to an interview," Gregson said. "What leverage do we have?"

Tom stood up again. "Actually, I have something that will make him talk."

It took Tom about ten minutes to explain the photo, why Larry had taken it and how it came to be in Tom's possession. He stressed that he wouldn't be going to the police about the matter, that he wanted to protect Sybil and his family at all costs and that he wanted to keep his connection to the Grey family out of the story—even if it meant he had to remove his byline.

"Surely, it won't come to that!" Dan said. "Anyone who took the time to look through that mountain of disclosures and paperwork would have found the evidence just the same. The hit and run is a totally separate issue. It doesn't have to come up in the story."

"Even if we use the photo to get Larry to talk to us?" Tom asked.

"We're only going to ask about his job at HG," Dan responded. "I've used stiffer forms of blackmail to get a source to talk."

"Of course, _you_ have," Cameron said with a roll of his eyes.

"He's right, Cam," Gregson said. "This is nothing. The only way the hit and run becomes a part of the story is if Martin wants to try to discredit Tom by saying, 'This man is biased because my son hit him with my car.' Even I don't think Martin Grey is capable of making his son a sacrificial lamb like that."

"You don't?" Tom asked, skeptical.

"No, and if he does, it doesn't matter. As long as the facts regarding the trade are with us, he'll look desperate, like he's trying to deflect attention. We'll triple check the figures. That's the only defense we need. "

Cameron walked over to Tom and put his hand on his shoulder. "This story is going to make your career kid. Put your name on it."

Gregson turned to Dan. "Dan, work on Sally and see if she'll put you in touch with Elizabeth Grey. We'll try to get at Larry through her first. My guess is she'll definitely try to protect him. Don't mention or send the photo except as a last resort, got it?"

"I'm on it," he said and headed back out to the newsroom.

"I'll start wrangling our legal team," Cameron said. "Martin's going to come at us with everything." Then he added smiling and rubbing his hands together, "This is going to be fun."

Gregson and Tom laughed as he left for his own office.

Gregson sat down at his desk and put his feet up on his desk. "You know, Tom, when I was at university, I went to a lecture by this old reporter who was covering the mining industry in Northern England. It was the mid-80s, during the big miners' strike. The professor who introduced him said that this guy's reputation as an investigative reporter was such that if your name appeared in the lead of one of his stories, it was time to call your lawyer. This is that kind of story. Great work, truly."

Tom smiled, feeling a bit overwhelmed.

"Work with Della and Helen on crafting the main story. Dan will do the interview sidebar with Larry, and Pete will take care of the FSA piece."

"When do you think you'll want to run it?"

Gregson sighed. "We need to document every step the money took. By the time, we do that, Pete gets some good info at FSA and Dan makes contact with the family, prepares for an interview and actually conducts it . . . a month, I'm guessing."

"Best get to work, then." Tom walked to the door, then stopped. "Thanks for the chance, Michael."

Gregson smiled and said, "Welcome to the big time."

**XXX**

That evening, Tom met Sybil out for dinner and filled her in on his first real day at work, not sparing a single detail. Sybil was happy and proud, and glad that his months and months of educating himself on finance and then sifting though endless boxes of files while his body healed had been worth it. There was a spark, an enthusiasm in him that she'd never seen before.

When she first met him on her first date with Larry and when she first got to know him on their drive up to Downton together, she had liked him, but she'd also believed she wasn't seeing him as he really was, the circumstances blurring the true possibilities between them. Then, when she became his nurse, it was his injuries and his frustrations that got in the way. Slowly, over the last few months, those barriers had melted away and their relationship—such as it was—strengthened and deepened. But it wasn't until tonight, listening to him talk about his work and about having the chance to make a difference in people's lives, that she believed she saw him. The _real_ Tom Branson.

She had told him last night that she loved him, and she had meant it. She might not have believed it possible then, but tonight, she loved him more.

**XXX**

After dinner, Sybil stood outside of the restaurant where they'd met up as Tom walked onto the street to hail a cab for her. One quickly pulled up. Sybil stepped off from the curb and kissed Tom lightly on the cheek over the door he was holding open for her. She was about to step in when he stopped her.

"I almost forgot." He pulled something out of the front pocket of his messenger bag and handed it to her. It was a picture of him from a vacation he had taken with Kieran and his family to the Irish coast, near Galway.

Sybil took it with a smile. "Thank you very much."

"You'll notice I'm topless."

Sybil looked at the photo, and indeed, Tom was standing on a beach in his swimming trunks. "Who knew chest hair could be so sexy?" She said with a twinkle in her eye.

Tom laughed. "I point it out only in case, you know, you have something in that vein you'd like to give me."

Sybil threw her head back in laughter.

"I'm being entirely serious. We have several more months of this, in case you've forgotten."

"I'll see what I can do," she said, winking, and stepped into the taxi.

She had been home for about 20 minutes and had started to get herself ready for a dip in her bathtub, being sure to put Tom's photograph within reach, when she heard her mobile ring. She went over to get it and rolled her eyes, smiling widely, when she saw that it was him.

"Hi," he said when she had answered.

"When I gave you my photo, I made the point of not calling you so you would have ample time to enjoy it."

Tom laughed. "Don't tell me I caught you in the middle of something."

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I would like to very much, actually, but my reason for calling is important."

"What's that?" Sybil asked, genuinely curious.

"My sister-in-law has just gone into labor, and I need to go over to their house to watch my nephews tonight and get them off to school in the morning. This might be a bit too much to ask, so feel free to say no, but . . . would, um, would you be able to come over to help me? They're a bit of a handful."

Sybil smiled to herself.

"Text me the address. I'll meet you there."

**XXX**

It had taken all of Sybil and Tom's energy to wrangle Liam and Kellen, given the excitement of the now imminent arrival of their new baby brother or sister and the presence of Sybil, who was declared "the prettiest girl in the world" (according to Liam) "except for mam" (according to Kellen). Once the boys had finally fallen asleep, it had taken less than 10 minutes for Tom and Sybil, snuggled up on the sofa together, to fall asleep themselves.

The following morning, they called in late to work, got the boys off to school and went over to the birthing center where Liz and Kieran were enjoying their new baby daughter, Katie.

Sybil was a bit nervous at the prospect of being introduced to Tom's family at such an intimate moment, but Liz immediately put her at ease, warmly welcoming her into their fold and even handing Katie over to her.

"She's so darling!" Sybil said cooing over the tiny bundle.

Watching her, Tom felt a lump form in his throat. His head didn't understand why it was there. His heart knew it was because he was seeing his future.


	11. The Best Day Ever

 

The next month went by in a whirlwind.

Tom was increasingly busy at the journal, with work ramping up on the HG Bank story, leaving less of his free time available for Sybil, who was getting increasingly frustrated despite how often she'd found herself "resorting" to Tom's photo for release.

Making matters worse, Edna had managed to find a boyfriend, and knowing full well that Sybil was in love with Tom but could not yet act on it, Edna took special pleasure in regaling Sybil with tales of her own sexual escapades any time Sybil came within ten feet of her.

"It's just such a lovely feeling to be truly sexually satisfied, but I guess you wouldn't know about that, would you, Nurse Crawley, what with having to keep your hands to yourself lest you get sacked."

If Sybil didn't enjoy her job so much, she might have punched the smug expression off Edna's face.

On a couple of occasions, in her regular meetings with Nurse James, she had come _this_ close to asking for a reassignment for Tom, but she stopped herself, not wanting a change in status at this point, when he was so busy, to confuse things or to distract him from work that she knew was deeply important to him. So she soldiered on, trying to work as much magic as she could on that stubborn knee that continued to give him trouble.

Tom was no less frustrated than Sybil, but his work was taking up so much more of his attention that he had less and less time to think about how much he wanted her.

Michael Gregson and Cameron Foster had set out a plan. If they played their cards right, Tom's story could be the biggest story of the year and officially put the fledgling journal on the map. But if they took a misstep and Martin Grey found out about what they were doing before anything had gone up on the website, Martin's lawyers would get a preliminary injunction and the story might die in the ensuing court battle and never see the light of day. Their timing had to be perfect.

First, Tom, with help from Helen and Della, had to document and write the main story detailing exactly how HG Bank's suspect trade had been done; they looked into any additional evidence they could find supporting the charge of insider trading, as well as into evidence of other illegal trades. The first draft was written, re-written, edited, re-written again and edited again until Michael and Cameron—along with the journal's lawyers—were satisfied that the journalism and the facts were unassailable. That piece done and ready to post online at a moment's notice, Pete set to work on investigating what FSA had known about the trade and what, if anything, had been done about it, while Dan reached out to Elizabeth through Sally to ask if she might convince her son to give them an interview. If either Pete or Dan's efforts resulted in Martin Grey finding out that the journal was investigating him, Tom, Della and Helen's piece would go up immediately. Once it was up, Cameron and Gregson would defend the story in TV interviews, acting as a buffer for the reporters.

Pete made some headway in his efforts—enough for a short sidebar on the FSA's inaction—but he and Michael eventually agreed that a more substantial piece would have to wait until they could share their findings with FSA, and they wouldn't do that until the story was already online. So they were waiting on Dan.

Dan spent three weeks sweet talking Sally into sharing where Elizabeth was and how he could contact her, but despite the looseness of Sally's lips when it came to sharing gossip about the men in the family, the young secretary was deeply loyal to the woman who had taken a chance on her and would not divulge anything regarding her whereabouts or contact information. She did confirm that Larry had gone out of the country, but she said that he had returned two weeks prior. On hearing that news, Michael checked with his police source and learned that the Grey lawyers were working on quashing the hit and run charge that had led him to flee the country. Larry's return meant that despite the initial threat of arrest, the police obviously weren't keeping tabs on him. It also meant that once Dan made contact, tracking him down for an interview would be easier.

The day that the main story was finished was a Wednesday. The following morning Dan called Sally again first thing, and this time told her why he wanted to talk to Elizabeth.

"We have a story ready to publish that accuses Larry Grey of insider trading in his position as fund manager at HG Bank. We want to talk to him before we go live with it because we believe he's not the actual culprit. We think Mrs. Grey will be able to convince him to protect himself by talking to us."

Thirty minutes later, Dan got a phone call from Elizabeth. Worried about her son and confident as to his innocence ("I hate to use this as a defense, but I doubt he's stepped into that office once in five years."), Elizabeth agreed to meet Dan in the lobby of a London hotel later that morning and to persuade Larry to come without telling him why.

"How are you going to do that, if I may ask?" Dan asked.

"I'm going to tell him I plan to divorce his father."

"Will he believe you?"

"He'll have to. It's the truth."

Dan scrambled the team and he, Tom and a transcriber headed over to the hotel to prepare. They rented two rooms, side by side. Dan would invite the Greys into one, while Tom and the transcriber in the other would be listening through a hidden device.

When Elizabeth arrived, Dan was waiting for her in the lobby. Seeing her alone, he worried that the plan would fail, but the truth was it had gotten rather easier. Larry was passed out drunk in the back of his car, so Dan and Larry's driver brought him into the hotel room where they waited for him to sober up. When he woke up, of course, Larry realized he was trapped. And when feeling trapped, Larry's instinct had always been to blame everyone but himself, so he wasted no time in telling all—in greater detail than his mother had realized he'd ever been privy to—about his father's financial misdeeds.

When Dan got to the questions specifically regarding his illegal trade, Larry admitted that his father used his account to deliberately lose money as a way to help cook the books, which was why Larry had never had a bonus. Many trades had been made with his personnel ID number, but they were always supposed to be losing ones.

"The rest of the managers were just supposed to assume that I was crap at my job and only held it because he was my father. They didn't question the fact I was never there."

"What was different about this trade? Why would he leave the bonus money in the pool account?"

"Nobody knows how much money is in the pool account at any given time. It's set up that way so that no manager takes more than he knows he's entitled to. My guess is my father made the trade from that account and forgot the bonus would kick into the pool automatically. None of the other managers would ever know it was there. I didn't know it was there until I got a letter from one of the accountants at the end of the fiscal year."

"Why didn't you take it out right away?"

Larry smirked. "I was saving it for rainy day."

With that he stood up, lit a cigarette and said to his mother, "I'll be at the bar, waiting for you to call me a lawyer," then left the room.

Elizabeth sat on the bed and quietly began to cry. It was several minutes before she opened her eyes and when she did, Dan had gone and Tom was sitting next to her.

"What . . . what are you doing here?"

"I'm the lead reporter on this story."

"Do you mean you were spying on us? Before, when you were driving for Larry?"

"No. It's actually all just a big coincidence," Tom said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I did that before I started this job—this story just happened to be my first assignment."

"Oh." Elizabeth didn't know what to think. She might have felt anger at Tom if she didn't feel so sad about everything else. At a previous point in her life, she was the kind of person that would have blamed her son's impending troubles on the young man before her. Now, she knew better. Having watched Larry, still half-drunk, recount remorselessly the crimes of his father, she realized just how deeply he had fallen, and it was nobody's fault but his.

A fresh set of tears began to fall. She felt Tom's hand on her arm and opened her eyes again to see him offering a handkerchief. "Thank you."

"I want you to know that I will keep my promise and won't go to the police regarding the night at the club, but I'd like you to promise me something."

"What's that?"

"That whatever your husband tries to do to me, you'll do everything you can to keep him away from my family."

She smiled through her tears. "I will. But he won't have time to come after you."

"What makes you say that?"

"If you think he'll have his hands full with the government after this comes out, it's because you haven't met the lawyer who'll be handling my divorce."

Tom smiled. "Well, for your sake, I hope it's a quick one."

Then, Tom stood and went back next-door to help Dan finish writing up the story.

**XXX**

As Dan and Tom were writing furiously to try to finish the interview piece before the evening newscasts, Sybil was wrapping up things at work. Usually, when he was home early, Tom would text her to let her know in case she wanted to meet up. She hadn't heard from him yet today, so when a group from the hospital invited her out for a drink to help celebrate the birthday of a fellow nurse, Sybil had no reason to say no.

They'd gone to a small pub near the hospital and pulled three large tables together to accommodate the large group. She'd been there for about fifteen minutes when she saw, to her surprise, Nurse James arrive, wave to the group and head over to the bar to buy herself a pint. Sybil went to her to say hello.

"I didn't know you were coming," Sybil said with a smile.

"Well, I don't have much of a taste for beer anymore, but once in a while it's not bad. Besides, it's nice to spend time with everyone outside the hospital. Nice reminder we're real people not just workhorses."

Sybil laughed.

"Speaking of, you've been putting in a lot of hours lately."

"I have three new patients this month, and I want to make sure I've started them off on the right foot."

Nurse James smiled. It was easy to see what a conscientious worker Sybil was. Nurse James sometimes wished some of her other girls took the work as seriously.

The bartender brought over pints for both Sybil and Nurse James. "Oh, did you order me one? You didn't have to."

Nurse James smiled. "Don't they say it's never good to drink alone?"

"Well, thank you."

The two women clinked their glasses and took a drink.

"How is Mr. Branson doing?"

Sybil hesitated. "Good. Two days a week now. Just working on strengthening the ligament, which is being stubborn. Shoulder is good as new."

"What about the other thing?"

"What other thing?" Sybil asked, a bit nervous as to what she might be referring.

"I do remember having to warn you regarding fraternization with patients."

"Nothing's happened, I swear it!" Sybil blushed as the words came out of her mouth.

Nurse James narrowed her eyes at her.

Sybil covered her face with her hands. "OK, we snogged once, but that was necessary in the context of the conversation."

To Sybil's utter shock, instead of reprimanding her, Nurse James burst our laughing.

"If it's only been once, then both of you have greater control than I imagined you would."

"I don't understand," Sybil said nervously.

"I think it's a noble thing, you wanting to see to someone you care about, but I can't help but notice that in the last few weeks, it's made you a bit frustrated—and I don't mean sexually frustrated, though given the young man's looks I could understand if you were—I mean, frustrated that you want to live your life fully but you can't. I know that I gave you my permission to do this at the beginning and that I told you to wait when he reinjured his shoulder, but I've come to reconsider because it's obvious that while you liked him then, you love him now. Nurse Crawley, you're young, but nobody has forever. Don't wait around following my rules. If he's what you want, then be with him. I think you'll find he'll heal much faster with you as his girl instead of his nurse."

Sybil smiled gratefully. "So you'll reassign him?"

"First thing tomorrow."

With that, Nurse James lifter her pint once again, and Sybil clinked it with hers before taking a long pull. Once she was done with her drink, Sybil said her goodbyes. She had a special night to get ready for.

She was still on the Tube on the way home she saw his text.

"Check the website, then meet me at pub across the street from the journal office."

When she got to her stop, she ran all the way to her flat, opened up her computer and saw it.

_"The Great Swindle" by Financial Columnist Tom Branson, with additional reporting by Peter Cheng, Dan Foster, Della Smith and Helen Stegger._

Sybil squealed seeing his name and title. She read the first four paragraphs, then scrolled down the lengthy article and decided to save the reading of it for later. She needed to see him as soon as possible.

**XXX**

The entire newsroom had been abuzz since Tom and Dan returned from the hotel hours earlier to file Larry's side of the story. Once that piece, Pete's FSA story and the main article were all cued up to publish, the whole team went into Cameron's office for what would be the final phone call before the story went live.

Gregson put the speaker-phone in the middle of the conference table and dialed.

"HG Bank, Martin Grey's office how may I help you?" Answered the secretary on the other end of the line.

"Hello, this is Michael Gregson, editor of the online journal Fleet Street Daily to speak with Mr. Martin Grey, please."

"I'm sorry, sir, but all press inquiries must go to our communications director. I'll—"

"But this affects Mr. Grey personally," Gregson cut in.

"Nevertheless, all press inquiries go to our communications director. I'll connect you now."

Gregson rolled his eyes.

"Robin Smith, speaking."

Gregson tried again. "Hello, Robin. This is Michael Gregson, I'm the editor of the new online journal Fleet Street Daily. You may have heard of us."

"I have, and I'm familiar with your past work Mr. Gregson. What can I do for you?"

"Well, in a few minutes, we're going live with a story about insider trading at HG Bank. Specifically, how Martin Grey used his son's trading license to short 1.7 million pounds worth of Smith Brothers stock the week before they went under, pocketing 276 million pounds in the return. Do you have a comment?"

Silence.

"Robin?"

After a few more seconds of silence, there was a click and then the sound of the dial tone.

Gregson looked around the room, smiling. "Everybody ready?"

The team looked at one another and then all nodded in unison.

Cameron stood up, opened the door and yelled out "GO!" to the webmaster, who'd been sitting across the newsroom awaiting his order. Cameron then took his mobile out of his pocket, dialed a number and after a few seconds said, "Hello, Carl, this is Cameron Foster. Hope you hear this message soon because on our website right now is the best financial story since the launch of the Euro. I'm giving BBC One first crack at me and Michael. If you don't call in the next ten minutes, you'll just have to see my ugly mug on TV on another channel."

Cameron threw the phone on the table, and just as it stopped spinning on the smooth surface, Molly came running in.

"BBC One evening producer on the line wants to know if you can be on via satellite in fifteen minutes."

Cameron turned to Gregson with a smile and said, "And you who didn't want to pay for the TV equipment."

Gregson rolled his eyes. "Good thing I brought my suit jacket in this morning."

For the first time, Tom noticed the cameras in the office between Michael's and Cameron's. The audio-video staff took about ten minutes to set it up to look like a TV studio.

"So while they're doing that, what do we do?" Della asked.

"The pub downstairs has a TV," Dan said standing, "Let's go get pissed."

Everyone laughed, and as they made their way to the door, Helen said, "You're buying, Tom."

"Why me?"

"Because you're getting a book deal out of this."

The team headed out as Michael and Cameron were getting mic'ed up and ready for air. About a half-hour, one breaking news segment featuring his two bosses and many shots of whiskey later, Tom texted Sybil.

When she finally arrived about an hour after that, Sybil could see from across the room that Tom was hilariously drunk. If she had thought that finding him in such a state was going to put a damper on her plans for later that night, the sloppy kiss he planted square on her lips when she greeted him told her otherwise.

"Hi," she said, holding back her laughter. "Having a good day, are we?"

He smiled goofily, leaning his forehead against hers. "The best—actually just very good. It would only be the best if I could take you home and have my way with you."

Sybil bit her lower lip, which led Tom to take one of his hands from her waist and cover her mouth with it.

"Please don't do that because it just makes me want you more," he said.

Sybil laughed, and he could feel the breath of her giggles between his fingers.

"You know, it's too bad about my knee, because if it weren't injured, I'd throw everyone out of this pub and take you right here on the bar."

Sybil laughed again. Drunk Tom was fun—and extremely sexy. "Speaking of your knee, where's you cane?"

Tom pulled his head up from against hers and looked around, then he remembered. "Oh, right. The bartender has it. I gave it to him for safekeeping because Dan was using it as a cue stick."

"So now that you're a big time reporter, are you going to have any time for your lowly nurse?"

"All of my time is yours, my darling."

Despite his goofy drunken smile, Sybil could see how deeply he'd meant what he said.

"Why don't we go home, then, and make this the best day ever?"

Tom's eyes widened. "Are you serious?" He asked in a whisper.

"Very," she said, giving him a come hither look that sobered him up immediately.

Tom bid a hasty goodbye to his colleagues, got his cane back and, with Sybil, ran outside as fast as his knee would let him to a taxi in which they managed to keep their clothes on—barely—on their way to Sybil's, a destination chosen on the assumption that the thicker walls of her flat would better shield the neighbors' ears because this was going to be a long night.

**XXX**

The first time was fast and intense. They were barely out of their clothes and hadn't bothered to turn down the bed sheets. After, as they lay in a breathless heap, they started laughing at themselves, at their situation, happily drowning in the silliness of being in love.

The second time was slow and deep and tender. They remained tangled in one another for several minutes after, simply looking into each other's eyes until Tom broke the silence with a soft whisper.

"Oh, my darling, I do love you so much."

Sybil gave him a sleepy smile in return and kissed him again, which led to the third time.

And at some point before the sun came up, they finally fell asleep.


	12. Whole

 

The following morning, Tom woke up to find himself alone, naked and sprawled out face down on Sybil's queen size bed with the sheet loosely wrapped around his midsection. He picked his head up and looked around, a bit disoriented. Suddenly, every moment from the night before came back to him, and he sank back into the mattress with a satisfied sigh. The sheets still held her delicious scent, and he closed his eyes and breathed it in.

He heard noise coming from the living room or kitchen—in truth he had no idea what the rest of Sybil's place looked like given that they hadn't bothered to turn on the lights on the way to the bedroom when they'd arrived last night. He looked up to the clock on the wall and saw that it was 7:43 a.m. He rolled over to sit up, and without thinking, he pushed his right knee into the mattress, at which point the knee seemed to have remembered how long he'd gone without his cane at the pub as well as the enthusiasm with which he undertook finally making love to Sybil. The throbbing pain was as intense as it had ever been.

"Ugh, feck."

Carefully, without bending the knee and with the sheet still wrapped around him, Tom moved to the edge of the bed and shifted his legs onto the floor. He tried standing, but found that he couldn't put much weight on the leg, so he twisted around to see if he could spot his cane from where he was sitting.

"Looking for something?"

And there she was. The girl of his dreams.

Sybil was leaning against the doorframe, holding the cane, a mug of coffee and several sheets of printer paper rolled up into a tube. She was wearing nothing but an old Smiths T-shirt that came to her upper thighs. Tom smiled. Her appearance and the delightfully sexy way the disheveled mass of curls on her head was going every which way, didn't make the throbbing pain dissipate, but it convinced Tom that whatever the painful consequences, spending last night together had been worth everything.

She came into the room and handed him the mug and the paper, leaning the cane against her night table.

He unrolled the paper and saw that it was a printed out copy of his article.

"You're good," she said with a proud smile. "And I'm not the only one who thinks so, if the constant buzzing of your mobile is any evidence."

"They're probably all Kieran and Liz," he said, taking a sip of coffee. "They called to say congratulations last night while I was plastered, but I only remember half the conversation, and I think I might have hung up on them."

"You were in quite a state. I'll have to remember that alcohol makes you randy."

"It certainly wasn't the alcohol," he said with a wink.

She blushed. He set the papers down on the bed and the coffee on the nightstand and reached for her hands. "I'd stand to give you a proper good morning kiss, but my knee is a bit hung over, it seems. There's serious throbbing going on."

"Oh, no!" She sat next to him on the edge of the bed looking concerned. "We should have taken it easy—especially since you were without your cane at the pub."

Tom wrapped her in both of his arms. "There was no way we were going to take it easy our first time."

"Our first _several_ times," Sybil said and laughed as he pulled her into a long slow kiss.

"Good morning."

She smiled. "It is a good morning, isn't it? Now, let me have a look." He leaned back on his elbows as she leaned forward and started to massage the knee gently with her hand.

"Ugh."

"Are you in a lot of pain?"

Tom sighed. "Seven of out ten."

"Oh, dear. Well, I have some pain meds you can take that will help. But if you could keep it elevated today and put some ice on it, that would be best. Do you have to go into work this morning?"

"No. Gregson said I could take it easy until Monday since he and Cameron are going to be doing the TV circuit and an official investigation is not likely to be announced until next week. But I'd like to at least keep an eye on the news. I need to stay up on things for follow up stories. And I'll need to call Kieran at some point to reassure him Martin Grey hasn't sent someone to break my other leg."

Sybil smirked. "I doubt it'll come to that."

"Have some inside knowledge, do you?"

"No, but I have a pretty mean right hook. I can fend some people off."

"I shall fear no man if I'm being protected by the likes of you," he said jokingly addressing her right hand, then kissing it.

Sybil laughed. "Anyway, getting serious here for a moment. I do have to go in soon, but it's a short shift today—I'm only on until three—so if you like, you can stay here, and on my way home, I'll stop by your flat and bring some clothes and whatever you need. It'd be better than you trying to go home now and possibly make the pain worse."

"Well, you are my nurse," he said with a smile. "What choice do I have but to obey your orders?"

Sybil took a deep breath. "Actually, I'm not your nurse anymore."

"What?"

"Apparently, my frustration about our situation has been written all over my face the last few weeks. Nurse James decided to take pity on me last night. You'll have a new nurse when you go in to see Dr. Clarkson tomorrow."

"Wow," he said. "So that chapter between us is over."

"But you're excited about the new one that's about to start . . . aren't you?" Sybil suddenly felt self-conscious and, with a shy shrug of her shoulders, asked, "You do want me to be your girlfriend, right?"

Tom sat back up and took her face into his hands.

"My darling, I want you to be a lot more than that—that is, as long as that's what you want."

Sybil blushed again and leaned in to kiss him softly. "It is."

After sealing that promise with several more kisses, Sybil helped Tom find his boxer briefs and helped him to her sofa, where she put a pillow under his knee and brought him an ice bag, a tray of bread and fruit, the remote control to her television and her laptop so he could take notes as he watched the news and read commentaries about his article on Martin Grey over the course of the day.

With him situated, Sybil showered and got ready for work. She gave Tom a quick kiss goodbye, but as she was opening her door to leave, she heard him call out.

"Thank you, by the way."

"For what, letting you lounge here all day?" She asked, smiling.

"For not giving me a topless photo." He sat up and peeked over the back of the sofa to look at her. "It was nice seeing them for the first time in the flesh."

Sybil laughed. She set her bag down in the doorway and walked back to her room. She came back into the living room and, standing over Tom, dropped on his lap a towel and a photo she'd taken and printed herself last week but had been too nervous and embarrassed to give him.

"In case you get bored."

Tom grinned and, looking back up at her, asked, "Why are you so perfect?"

Sybil smiled. "I'm not perfect, silly. Just perfect for you."

He sighed, leaning his head back against the armrest and looking up at her adoringly. "That you are."

She bent down to kiss him on the forehead and headed out on her way once again.

As she walked out of her building, she laughed at the thought of a practically naked Tom "enjoying" himself in her flat all day. Then, she realized how hard it was going to be to concentrate at work with that image in her mind.

She rounded the corner toward her Tube station when her mobile rang. She saw that it was her mother and answered.

"Hello, mum."

"Hi, Sybil dear, how are you? I hope I haven't called too early this morning."

"No, I'm just on my way to the hospital."

"The reason I've called so early is that I wanted to catch you before you made plans for tomorrow night. Your father and I are going to be in London this weekend, and we wanted to take you to dinner, if you aren't busy."

"What's the occasion?"

"Well, if you haven't heard. Martin Grey has gotten himself into some trouble."

Sybil bit her lip. "I had heard, yes."

"Serves him right, the rascal,"—at this Sybil breathed something of a sigh of relief—"and poor Elizabeth just filed for divorce, so she's going to be going through a lot. I'll be at the London house a bit more in the next few weeks to try to be there for her, but I do want to see you, too. It's been ages since you've come home."

"I know. I've had loads going on."

"Are you free tomorrow night?"

"I am, and, um . . . actually, mum . . . is it OK if I bring someone?"

"Oh? And who might that be?"

Sybil could feel her mother's smile in her words.

"My boyfriend."

There was a pause, which Sybil attributed to her mother trying to contain herself and not express too much excitement.

Finally, Cora said, "I can't wait to meet him."

Sybil, to her own surprise, realized that she couldn't wait either.

**XXX**

**Ten months later**

"So where are things with the book?" Robert asked Tom as the two sat catching up in the library of Downton Abbey.

"I've been given a two-week break from the journal to work the final revisions, so if everything goes according to the schedule, it'll be out in about a month."

"They've rushed publication, then?"

"That's around when Martin's appeals hearing is scheduled to start. The publisher figured having the book out at the same time would help sales."

"Not a bad strategy, but having read the proof you sent over, I must say the prose will sell itself."

Tom smiled bashfully. "Thank you for taking the time to read it. I appreciated your notes."

"Taking no time, you mean. He read it in two days."

Both turned to see Cora coming in with Sybil trailing behind her.

"There are plenty of financial journalists with more experience than Tom," Robert said, "but few of them can call themselves good writers—and certainly none of them bother to write in a way lay people can understand the subject." Addressing Tom again, he added, "It's an excellent first effort. You're setting a high bar for yourself."

"Thank you, Robert. That means a lot."

Sybil sat down next to him and took his hand, squeezing it.

Cora smiled to see how happy Sybil was. She knew that Tom and Sybil hadn't met under ideal circumstances, but she was proud of what they'd overcome and how steadfastly Sybil stood by him as some in their social circle questioned her relationship with the young journalist who'd dared take down Martin Grey—even after the government had confirmed Tom had been right about every charge. The truth was, Cora herself might have questioned it, were it not for how highly her friend Elizabeth had spoken of Tom when Cora had called her on the very evening the story went live.

"Can all of that be true?" She'd asked Elizabeth.

"I'm afraid it is."

"But are you sure—sometimes you can't trust these people in the press. You know that better than anyone."

"I do, Cora, but I know this reporter, and his integrity is unassailable. I trust him."

Neither Tom nor Sybil knew about that conversation nor about the supporter they'd had in Elizabeth Grey, when Cora revealed to her a week later that they were a couple. Cora had thought it best to let matters be and let Tom and Sybil—and Elizabeth—put the past behind them. And indeed, looking at her daughter and her boyfriend now, Cora could think of nothing else but how bright the future that lay ahead of them was.

As if reading her thoughts, Sybil asked her mother, "Have you spoken with Elizabeth recently? How is she doing?"

"New York agrees with her. I think I might take a trip to visit her next month."

"And Larry?" Tom asked quietly.

"Four months sober now. Elizabeth was surprised when I told her he'd called you both to make amends."

"It was probably oddest phone call of my life," Tom said. "But I know it's one of the steps of recovery. At least he's trying to clean himself up."

Cora smiled, always impressed by Tom's generous heart.

"Are you two going to rest up before dinner tonight?" she asked. "Mary and Matthew and the baby should be arriving in a few hours."

"We were thinking we'd take a walk to the village," Sybil said.

"Well, I hope you enjoy the day, but I'm afraid I should be going," Robert said, standing. "I need to go into the office to make a few phone calls, but I'll be back in an hour or so. We're so glad you made it up." He went over to give Sybil a kiss on the cheek and shake Tom's hand before taking his leave.

"I should go check in with Mrs. Patmore on dinner," Cora said, adding, "Don't wear yourselves out," as she headed to the door.

Sybil rolled her eyes. "We'll be fine, mum." Once they were alone, Sybil stood and held out her hand to Tom. "Shall we?"

He looked at her for a long moment and smiled in a way that seemed curious to Sybil.

"What?" She asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

He took her hand and stood. "Nothing."

About twenty minutes later, they were walking around the grounds having decided to enjoy the balmy afternoon by taking a leisurely stroll rather than heading to the village.

Tom turned to Sybil. "You know, we never did the running test."

"Running test?"

"Don't you remember, way back when I was still on crutches, you said that when I could outrun you, you'd declare me fully healed."

Sybil smiled. "You've been fine for months."

"So you don't want to try it?" He asked, with the same smile Sybil had seen on his face in the library.

Sybil narrowed her eyes at him. "Why now?"

Tom shrugged. "It's OK if you don't want to. I'd probably leave you in the dust anyway."

"So sure of yourself, are you?" Sybil said, stopping and crossing her arms.

"You're the one who doesn't want to do it."

"Fine—GO!" And she took of running as fast as she could over the grass.

Tom laughed and immediately ran after her. It didn't take long for him to catch up. When he was a good three meters ahead of her, he turned around and started running backwards, holding his arms out with a big grin on his face. "Come on, Nurse Crawley, is that your best?"

Sybil sped up and ran up to him with such force that she sent him falling onto his back side with her falling on top.

"Ow!" Tom yelled.

Sybil immediately sat up on his legs. "Oh my God, Tom! That was so stupid of me! Are you all right? Your shoulder, your knee, are they—"

"I'm fine! I swear!"

Sybil moved to stand up, but Tom, still laying back on the grass, grabbed her waist and pulled her back down so she was sitting on his thighs.

"I'm OK. I just landed on something," he said. He arched his back and started rooting around the ground directly beneath him with his right hand. "Aha!"

Tom sat up, brought his hand forward in a fist and put it in front Sybil.

"What is it?" She asked.

He turned his fist over and opened it. A diamond solitaire ring was laying on his palm.

Sybil gasped and covered her face with her hands.

He grinned. "Sybil, will—"

"Yes!" Her exclamation somewhat muffled behind her hands.

"Will you let me get the question out first!?" He said, laughing.

She brought her hands down so they were only covering her mouth.

Seeing her watery eyes, Tom felt tears sting the back of his own.

He whispered, "Will you marry me?"

She nodded vigorously, tears now running down her cheeks. She stuck her left hand out and he carefully slid the ring onto her finger. After several minutes of laughter and tears and kisses, they stood and held one another in a tight embrace for far longer than either would remember later.

Standing there, holding his future wife, Tom thought about everything he had felt—physically and emotionally—over the last year and a half, and he squeezed Sybil tighter, feeling happier than he had ever felt because Sybil hadn't just healed him. She had made him whole.

 


	13. Honeymoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I first wrote this story, it ended with the previous chapter. I added this short little drabble much later. It takes place a year from when we left off and finds Tom and Sybil enjoying their honeymoon.

 

**One year later**

"Why did we come here?"

Sybil rolled over lazily on the bed and snuggled into Tom, enjoying the feel of his skin against hers. "Santorini? I think that answers itself."

Tom turned onto his side to face her and pulled her closer into him. "What I mean is, we haven't left this room since we got here two days ago. Why bother having traveled to the Greek islands if we weren't actually going to see them."

Sybil kissed his nose and pulled back. "We do have two more weeks here. We might make it outside eventually."

Tom's hand traveled from her shoulder to her back side, which he squeezed playfully. "Not likely."

Sybil laughed. "What does it matter, anyway? It's our honeymoon. We're supposed to stay in bed and shag all day long."

"Oh, it's a requirement, is it?"

"Indeed."

Tom smiled. "Well, if that's true we could have just stayed in London. We have perfectly comfortable bed there, you know."

Sybil narrowed her eyes at him. "That's no fun. Besides, even if we don't step outside, we do have a view."

Sybil rolled over again, fighting off his hands playfully and stood. Tom sat back on the bed and admired the view as his wife, wearing nothing except her brand new wedding ring, walked over to the picture window directly in front of their hotel bed and dramatically opened the curtains to reveal a gorgeous view of the southern Aegean Sea. She pushed the window fully open—they'd closed it upon arrival in an effort to not to serenade those on adjacent balconies and on the beach below with their loud and enthusiastic newlywed lovemaking. Feeling the ocean breeze on her face, Sybil took a deep breath of fresh air.

"Voila! Isn't it beautiful?" She asked turned around.

"Very."

Sybil smirked, seeing how focused he was on her naked form and not the landscape behind her. "I don't mean me, silly."

"I do," Tom said sitting up again and holding out his hand to her.

Sybil walked back over the to bed slowly and sat on the edge, where his right leg was sticking out from the sheet that was barely covering the rest of him. She traced her fingers over the long scar over his knee, but kept her eyes on his. It had become a bit of a subconscious habit for her. Whenever he wore shorts or his leg was visible somehow and he was sitting near to her, it was as if her hands were drawn to it, a reminder of his strength and everything they had gone through to get to this point.

"Thank you," she said, quietly.

"For what?"

"For saying, I do."

He laughed. "Just now or a few days ago?"

Sybil turned and climbed back onto the bed, pushing him down into the pillows. "Both."


	14. And Baby Makes Three

 

**Five years later**

"Are you OK?" Tom asked, looking over at Sybil anxiously as they both fought to catch their breath. "I should have been more gentle. It's been so long, I guess I got a bit carried away. I'm sorry."

Sybil laughed, her chest still rising and falling quickly from the exertion. "I believe I was the one yelling 'faster,' wasn't I?"

Tom laughed, too, looking up at the ceiling. The two of them lay side by side on their bed, after being intimate for the first time since Sybil had given birth to their son, Michael. She had been given the go-ahead by her doctor three days before, but Michael and the mutual exhaustion that comes with being parents of a newborn hadn't allowed them a moment to take advantage until now—morning naptime.

"Speaking of yelling," Tom said. You should at least try to keep quiet, he's only in the next room."

"It's all right. He doesn't sleep long, but he does sleep soundly."

"How long has he been down?"

Sybil looked over to the clock on her dresser. "Only twenty minutes! Wow, that was quicker than it felt."

"Sorry, love. I guess I'm out of practice."

Sybil laughed again. "Me too. How long had it been?"

"He's eight weeks old and the last time was three weeks before he was born."

"That's almost three months! I don't think we've ever abstained that long."

"I _know_ we haven't."

Sybil laughed. "Well, that last stretch of pregnancy I was barely able to move, let alone anything else. And since the birth it _was_ doctor's orders."

Tom looked over at her with a smile. "That and the fact that Young Master Branson-Crawley over there seems a bit of an attention hog when it comes to his mam."

" _Mum_."

He laughed at their recurring argument over which parental accent the newest addition to the family would favor. "Darling, you chose—in fact, you _insisted_ we move to Dublin. That has pretty much sealed our son's fate as Irish through and through."

Sybil narrowed her eyes at him. "You don't think my English genes will manifest themselves with vigor?"

"Well, when you put it that way . . . there's no denying he'll certainly get a healthy dose of stubbornness from you."

This earned Tom a smack across the chest, which made him laugh. He grabbed onto her hand before she could pull it away and rolled over to kiss it.

"Do you suppose we have time for another go?" He asked playfully pulling her toward him.

"Maybe, but do you think we can make it in 10 minutes this time? My nipples are starting to tingle, and I'm likely to spill out at any moment."

"Have I told you how lovely they are lately?"

Sybil laughed. "Not in the last hour."

"Well, they are," he said, sweeping his hand lightly over her breasts.

"Darling, focus! Time is short!"

He moved himself so he was hovering over her with a mock-serious face. "Ten minutes, yeah? I'm up for the challenge."

Sybil's eyes widened and her smile turned into a grin. "Clearly."

Tom lowered himself to kiss her but stopped suddenly, hearing Michael whimper from the other room.

"Shhh," she whispered. "Maybe he'll go back to sleep."

They waited a few anxious moments without moving and sure enough his soft cry quieted down again. Tom's shoulders relaxed again and Sybil pulled him in for the kiss he'd been just about to give her. As their lips met, he felt her legs curl around him. He broke the kiss and brought his lips to the spot just below her ear he knew drove her mad, but no sooner had he placed a light kiss there, that he felt her tense up beneath him.

"What?" He asked concerned.

"That," she said looking doing to her breasts, which were now leaking milk.

Tom sighed, then opened him mouth to speak but before anything came out, Michael made himself heard first. And this time, it wasn't a whimper but a loud and very determined wail.

Sybil rolled her head back into the pillow. "Bollocks."

They looked at one another again and laughed.

"I'll get him," Tom said. "You get yourself cleaned up."

"Why bother," she said. "I'm sure he can smell it from where he is."

Tom hopped off the bed, found his shorts on the floor and pulled them up and trotted over to the nursery to find a very awake, crying baby, fists flailing. As soon as Michael felt his father's hands on him, he calmed, but his whimpering did not subside completely until Tom had brought him back to their bedroom, where Sybil had pulled herself up into a sitting position, and placed him on her chest. Michael's mouth immediately started rooting for her nipples and in seconds had latched on. Tom smiled and sighed, then he slipped back into bed, sitting behind Sybil and pulling her and Michael into him.

"What's that look on his face?" Tom asked.

Sybil laughed as she watched her wide-eyed son nurse voraciously. "One I'm very familiar with! It's one that used to grace your own mug whenever Larry made a pass at me."

"Oh?" Tom asked skeptically. "What does it mean, then?"

"She's mine."


End file.
